Minna Henriksson
Minna Henriksson (born in 1976 in Oulu, Finland; lives in Helsinki) is a visual artist working with a disparate range of tools including text, drawing, painting and linocut. She studied art in Brighton, Helsinki and Malmö. Henriksson’s work relates to leftist, anti-racist and feminist struggles. Her works are often based on extensive archival research and draw on real historical events aiming to bring forth marginalisation and oppression and to highlight positions of power. Dealing with historical cases, she hopes to politicise processes in the present that seem neutral and inevitable. One of the themes of her work is the ideological nature of history writing itself. The artist is also interested in exploring the language of political art and modes of representation. Henriksson has been active in various collectives and often works collaboratively. She is a member of the leftist art workers’ association “Kiila” (“The Wedge”). In 2017, she was awarded the Anni and Heinrich Sussmann Artist Award by a Viennese foundation promoting artistic work committed to the ideal of democracy and antifascism.
Zeitenwende
2024,
Wall drawing, sizes variable
For A Time in Pieces, Minna Henriksson has been commissioned to create her latest large-scale wall drawing entitled Zeitenwende. The drawing traces the geopolitical, ideological and militaristic connections to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine within a larger European and international framework. Based on collaborative research with prominent Ukrainian historian Georgiy Kasianov, Henriksson’s map remains decidedly subjective and selective, highlighting the never-neutral practice of historiography. Beginning with the period of denazification and the early envisioning of the European Union, the map draws attention to a number of historical and contemporary moments that belong to the realm of chronopolitics. Some of these events, like the Russian- led memory wars or the infamous declaration of a “Zeitenwende” (“turning point”) by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, already emphasise the politicisation of time through their terminology. Henriksson’s drawing not only chronicles past and present events, but also introduces predictions and various speculations regarding a near or distant future, centred on the crisis of the Suwałki Gap, the only land route connecting the Baltic States with the rest of the European Union and NATO. A strategically important region in northeastern Poland, the Suwałki Gap is projected to become contested, and the artist hypothesises a variety of more and less probable scenarios of our common future within and beyond Europe.
Between Bridges, daadgalerie
May 24–July 27
A Time in Pieces
Curated by Serge Klymko and Viktor Neumann