Laura Iisalo: Siiri ja minä

Completion year: 2025

Technique: Fabric, thread, acrylic resin, old hanger from the Pitkäniemi hospital

Size: 53 x 80 cm

The artwork is part of the Pigeon Heart series, which is based on the life of my great-grandmother. Siiri, a mother of six and an artistically gifted woman, fell ill with encephalitis lethargica (sleeping sickness) in 1923. She never recovered, spending the last sixteen years of her life in the Pitkäniemi psychiatric hospital. I interpret Siiri’s fate as her descendant’s, and as a woman able to forge her own path.

I have built sets, reconstructed Siiri’s dresses, and collected old objects that together create a new, imagined reality through photography, moving image, and sculpture. At the heart of the exhibition are a worn wooden chair salvaged from the hospital and a photograph taken in Pitkäniemi.
In the middle of the garden, in peace and quiet, sits the bride.

The body of work reflects the fates of many of Siiri’s contemporaries
— women who had no choice.

“How to depict darkness? How to depict light?
How to capture what happens between the two?
I have wakefulness and dream, love
and longing, freedom and loss.
How to portray it all?”

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