PANCARTA/Helsinki
Este cielo no es el cielo de mi tierra / Tämä taivas ei ole kotimaani taivas, 240×420 cm, Mixed media on canvas 2016-2017.
Curated by Perpetuum Mobile
In 2016, Perpetuum Mobile’s PLURIversity commissioned Juan-Pedro Fabra Guemberena and Ossi Koskelainen to develop their artistic research in a process involving what Guy Debord would have described as an urban dérive. Crossing from central Helsinki through Hakaniemi to Sörnäinen, through the old container port being destroyed and redeveloped in Sompasaari, across pristine Kulosaari to the eastern suburb of Kontula, they encountered the fluxum and jetsam of urban myth, dying and being reborn.
Fragments of these findings made their way into this banner-work, a massive canvas with layer upon layer of dirt, paint, text, white-wash and historical knowledge. Physically dragged through Helsinki in nigh reverse from Kontula to central Helsinki centre via the Long Bridge separating Siltasaari and Kruunuhaka on the shoulders of Koskelainen, this work is from and of the street. It carries with it stories of Helsinki lives and pasts, of urban destruction and renewal, of the battle for finding a home under a foreign sky, and of changing times and political reality.
“Este cielo no es el cielo de mi tierra” literally means “This sky is not the sky of my homeland”. This is a line from a famous milonga popularized by the group “Los Olimareños”, sung by the Uruguayan political diaspora in the 1970’s and embraced by the many Latino communities exiled for decades from their homeland for political reasons. Aside from being a song of exiles, it can be read as a cry of despair, a cry for help by someone who cannot even recognize the very sky above their head. This thick, heavy canvas of life, like the Finnish tango, has all these homelands in it.
https://www.perpetualmobile.org/co-memorations-2018/?lang=en
Documentation of the walk from Kontula to the Long Bridge in the center of Helsinki.