Statement — Heli Kaskinen

Meanwhile, On The Other Side

When I was young, my grandmother tried to teach me to wink. After several unsuccessful attempts, I finally came up with my own version: blinking with both eyes at the same time. My parents, unaware of this lesson with my grandmother, took me to the doctor to have my eyes checked, but the mystery of why I was closing my eyes was not resolved. Later in life, my grandmother gradually lost her memory and was unable to recognize me. But on our last encounter she winked at me. This small gesture turned the whole situation around. She remembered me after all, and our little secret.

This is the true story of me learning to wink. In fact, it is also a story about memory, trauma, and invisibility along with hope: humor, seeing, and reunion. The wink of an eye may be a subtle gesture, but it has the capacity to completely change the essence of things. It can introduce a whole new perspective by revealing the multifacetedness of things otherwise considered banal, void, or even serious. The story tells with other words what my work is all about: to look at life with a gentle wink.

Internal wounds are traces of the past hiding from a gaze. I am interested in the dynamics between past and present along with what is visible and invisible, the stories that are out of sight, hiding within surfaces like images, human-shaped shells, or the domestic walls. But how to look at something that can’t be seen? Adapting to the notion of the philosopher Gaston Bachelard: imagining beyond the imagination opens a way to the other side of the visible.

At the core of my work is the notion of reversing. In the House Project, First House (1974), the conceptual artist Hreinn Fridfinnsson turned a whole house inside out, revealing its interior on the outer walls and thus offering a whole new perspective on everyday life. This gesture of turning is also my starting point. By a gentle, self-reflective humorous gaze, I add in the found images and objects a piece of myself in order to bring out a different story than the one that we’ve already seen.

I stand opposite of the image and start a staring contest with the mirror, an unknown and hollow figure from the past. Who blinks first, me or the one I’m looking at? If this made you smile, you may see how the gentle wink turns the invisible into the visible and the inanimate into the animate. In front of the mirror as well as under the human-shaped shell is a beating heart, another real one – who has, too, an extraordinary story.