Here, There, and In-Between

About the exhibition

First, it was the Turakka Purhonen clan in Sirkka, Kittilä. Raisa and Misha’s little house, like an oasis in polar February, crammed with fluffy Samoyeds, bulky winter overalls, improvised microphones on the breakfast table, the brownish tang of tattirisotto, and the infinite snow. That time coincided with the flow of an enthusiastic, careless mark-making, and the everything-is-possible feeling, getting to know each other on the freezing floorboards of the studio.

Then, for several moons, an In-Between. A fingertip exchange of information and warmth and ideas, reminding each other that we are Here despite the distance. We received the news from Sculptor, in north and south, with joy and the conjecture of a weather forecast: the more certain we were that we were going to put up a show together, the hazier our direction became. In the chat, one of us suggested: ‘Not Here nor There’. Another corrected: ‘Here and There!’. A third one proclaimed: ‘Here, There and In-Between.’

Meeting again at the Sirkka Biennale last year helped us forge the core muscle of our alliance: an irrational trust in each other, and in the happy outcome of our project. The art still lagged behind, latent, following the wake of our waxing complicity.

Last summer, the three of us spent a whole week in a pressure cooker at Pauliina’s studio in Arabia: painting, eating, frolicking and howling together. Painting felt like walking on thin ice. There were tears of self-doubt shed on the studio sofa. Finally, the apparitions and blobs that you see in this exhibition started to emerge: a baby squeezed out from a backdrop of operatic thighs, fabrics glued on to the canvas in an unseasonable manner, columns of cheeky diamonds, a cascade of birth waters, pictures of deceased loved ones, blooms that long to be spirit, a diligent sewing machine.

After an In-Between of a few weeks – feelings of pride and shame very fast following each other on WhatsApp, our reputations in tatters – last month, the works traveled to Lapland in a blue van, with tuliaiset of Danish pastries, and lampaankääpää. The paintings looked different in the north, under the blaze of a surprising and merciless sunshine of September. We talked about painting, suffered from it, rejoiced with it, watched it grow and evolve in front of our burning eyes. The panels were imposing directions unknown, throwing insolent questions at us, yet we kept going, making decisions, letting go of them, meddling with each other’s creative output, until ahoy! It’s happening! We found (for the moment) some solace in them.

The paintings are somewhere in-between, almost there, never quite here, maybe finished, maybe sandwiched on a borderline.

Photo: Pauliina Turakka Purhonen, Raisa Raekallio and Misha del Val in front of thei piece of art, Paradise, 2024, oil, acrylic and textile on canvas, textile sculpture. Photographer: Aukusti Heinonen