HIPPOLYTE STUDIO
Kalevankatu 18 B, 00100 Helsinki
09 612 33 44, www.hippolyte.fi
Open: Tue–Fri 12–17, Sat–Sun 12–16

4.-27.3.2011
Kirsti Nenye
The Last Spaces: Kanerva, Tuulikki, Verneri

 

When old people can no longer cope at home, they are often pulled into a downward spiral where the care services provided for them increase in number as the person grows weaker. Eventually they often end up living in an apartment in a nursing home or just a bed in a ward, where their personal space is merely a curtained cubicle. For the quality of the old person’s remaining life, it is important that the visual character of these spaces respects the inhabitant’s wishes.

For the past few years, Kirsti Nenye has researched and photographed the visual environments of old people in a series of nursing homes, hospitals and senior citizens’ private homes. In the The Last Spaces photographic exhibition, she wants to draw our attention to such environments. The show underscores the importance of landscapes, knick-knacks, paintings, houseplants, textiles, clothes, and above all photographs.

In the exhibition, Nenfye focuses on three persons by showing pictures of the last places they have inhabited, and by joining them to more suggestive photographic works. In the photographer’s mind, the works in the exhibition represent the persons in question. The works are always photographs of something, even though they depart from the conventional documentary idiom, approaching conceptual and abstract photography instead. For Nenye, it is important that there are real things underlying the pictures, things that the pictures make visible, yet not self-evident. The audience must be given a chance to interpret these works through their own conceptual apparatus and life experiences. Although the pictures are often conceptual, they are also very photographic, in addition to demonstrating traditional manual skill. They represent the pictorial idiom Kirsti Nenye is perhaps best known for.

 

Kirsti Nenye began her career as a documentary photographer in the 1970s. In 1976, she graduated as photographer from the four-year degree programme in photography at the University of Industrial Art Helsinki UIAH. The same year she relocated to Lahti, Finland, and along with her work as freelance photographer also began teaching photography at the Lahti Art School (now the Institute of Fine Arts in Lahti). As a result of working with visual artists and the influence of the framework of art, Nenye’s pictures developed over the years into an ever more painterly direction, only to return once again to a more documentary idiom.

Kirsti Nenye has continued her studies on several occasions. She has earned the degree of Bachelor of Culture and Arts and a Master’s degree in visual art. Her works have in recent years been included in several group exhibitions in Finland as well as internationally. She has also worked actively and held positions of trust in various organisations in the field of photography and visual art.

Information and press images:
Hippolyte Studio, +358 9 612 33 44, info[at]hippolyte.fi

Kirsti Nenye