ENTTEN TENTTEN, 14.–31.8.2025

Makers´ Gallery, Vaasa

Diagnosis: recurrent melanoma.

Diagnosis: perhaps death, perhaps not.

How beautiful the world suddenly is.
The moment is here and present.
How light and airy the flight in it feels.

Except at night, when I wake up overwhelmed with worry for my children's future.
How deeply I wish to live.

Should I write a will?

The seasons change, and I see everything again like a child.
January is dark blue, May smells of bird cherry.
July is ocean waves and wind, December is only sleep.

I am grateful for every day.
If I'm no longer here, everything else will remain and go on.

Time passes. I'm alive and healthy.
Life goes on, everything is fine.
I tell myself everything is fine.
Everything is fine, everything is fine.
The echo in my head turns the tone into mockery.

I go into the scanner every four months.
I panic, and finally, I give thanks.
I listen to my body.
Every six months, tension and gratitude.
Later, once a year.
The countdown to health has begun.

Sometimes I can't calm myself.
Sometimes I can.
I am tired.

I cry because I still get to see my children.

My instinct says I am healthy.
My instinct says I am not.
My instinct says all is well.
My instinct says there is a word: HOPE.
That, too, makes me cry.

We all leave this place eventually.
But I ask to stay for a while longer.

Entten tentten, my exhibition, deals with the unwanted friendship with cancer. A kind of companionship, in which cancer cells grow in your body without permission, building their own society there. And the question: why?!

Throughout my artistic process, I reflected on all the questions that cancer raised in me—thoughts that wandered through my mind almost constantly. I had an urgent need to process this terrifying illness the way a child might play through things too heavy for their understanding, to make sense of them.

I hope this exhibition helps others to face, understand, and heal.