Iholla is a group exhibition featuring three artists. Visual artists Marjo Hyvärinen and Heidi Savilakso-Saatsi, together with multimedia and performance artist Ida Nisonen, are also members of Sipoo Artists.

Iholla explores themes related to womanhood and gender, reflecting on power, the exercise of power, and cultural norms. The exhibition approaches these themes from a variety of perspectives. The works consider boundaries, embodiment, and gender diversity, as well as what it means to inhabit one's own body.

The works by Hyvärinen, Nisonen, and Savilakso-Saatsi serve as metaphors for how historical structures of power and cultural imagery have not disappeared, but continue to resurface:

"When we are on the skin, we are at the interface, between the external and the internal.
When we are on the skin, we are at a boundary where one may pass only with the owner's permission.
When we are on the skin, we are in a place where everyone's rights do not apply."

Marjo Hyvärinen (b. 1974), a visual artist, creates works using various techniques that seek out and trace invisible boundaries between girlhood/womanhood and distorted exercises of power.

The bear first appeared in my work in 2007. This is the first exhibition I have dedicated to the Golden King of the Forest. I want to restore Otso to the place he deserves, as our god and our ancestor, one who should be treated with dignity and care.

Although the bear embodies an awareness of its sacredness that has been etched into our collective heritage, today it has nevertheless been reduced to an advertising figure for products and companies. The image of the bear is used to evoke associations of trustworthiness and strength, ideas that have been rooted in us since prehistoric times. Both people and places have been given names derived from the bear.

Among many Indigenous peoples, the bear is regarded as a mythical being. In Finnish folklore, the bear has been considered to descend from a god and from a human-bear ancestor. The Kalevala contains a poem about the bear's birth, in which the bear is lowered from the heavens to earth on silver straps. The bear has also been worshipped as a totemic deity among hunter-gatherer-fisher peoples throughout the subarctic zone. By the Iron Age, bear totemism had become established as a symbol of strength and courage, but also of feminine fertility.

Although Christianity did its best to purge the people of pagan customs, rituals were still associated with bear hunting. The best known of these, the karhunpeijaiset, or bear funeral feast, were still celebrated in Finland as late as the twentieth century. After a bear was killed, its skull might be hung in a sacred pine tree and its bones scattered in a place reserved for them. Among the Yukaghirs of Siberia, the bear's skull is still placed facing west, toward the setting sun and the land of shadows, where the cycle of eternal rebirth is believed to lie.

In Finland, bears are hunted in order to prevent the bear population from growing too large. The hunting quota set by the state was 457 bears for the 2021–2022 hunting season. In Finland, bears are known to attack humans approximately 0–2 times a year. Such situations generally arise in connection with bear hunting or when a person finds themselves between a mother bear and her cub.

Although the bear has been rolled and reshaped into a personification in myths and fairy tales, it has nevertheless retained its mythical value in the eyes of humankind. The bear has been a sacred animal to us for thousands of years. So sacred, in fact, that people did not dare to speak its name aloud. This is why the bear has acquired more than 200 euphemistic names and nicknames. I have named the works in the exhibition On Otava's Shoulders after the names given to the bear.

If the bear spoke in human languages, what kinds of names would it give to humans?

If the bear wrote poetry, what kind of creation poem would it write about the human being?

If the bear were a capitalist, where would it print the image of a human?

If the bear killed humans as a hobby, what kinds of celebrations would it hold?

"Then old Väinämöinen himself spoke these words:
'Not was Otso born upon the grass, nor in the threshing-floor!
There was Otso brought to birth, the honey-paw fashioned
near the moon, beneath the sun, upon the shoulders of Otava,
in the company of the maidens of the air,
beside the daughters of nature.'"

Life is like a road, along which I travel, becoming more myself with each passing day. The self is our essence, the core through which I express myself and reflect my surroundings. Everything that filters through the self is a reflection of the seed, the core that was planted within me at the moment of my birth. We all have a seed, a core from which our branches and roots reach out towards the world.

Morality is the common soil from which we grow. We push our way out of the dark, hard earth, towards the light, and grow. Our material is alive. We have the possibility to grow and allow the knowledge within our seed to become reality. We are part of the dance between matter and spirit that unfolds on Earth.

When I was painting the works for the exhibition, a road somehow emerged in each of them. I did not know why. Winter turned into spring. As the snow melted and the light increased, the peace of the Earth was shaken. The birds were singing so loudly in the trees that I thought: somewhere in Europe, weapons were sounding in the same way.

Painting was my escape from reality. When I paint, I lose my sense of time and place. I paint roads that emerge from my consciousness in an unconscious state. I search for the way through a jungle of colours, while the symphony of harmonies roars and the brush beats out a rhythm on the canvas. I compose colour gradients that play music. The contrasts of light and shadow sound in minor and major keys.

In the darkness, pauses peering out explode the silence into a spectral rainbow.

The roads along which humanity's footsteps wander forward through time remain unexplored.

The road that, for some reason, appeared in each of my works perhaps reflects the journey humanity is making at this very moment. We cannot see what lies beyond the bend, but we keep moving forward nonetheless. And we make that journey together.

When I was painting these works, a climate conference was being held in the United States. The biggest news to catch my attention was President Trump's tweet, in which he, in his own way, described climate activist Greta Thunberg: "She seems like a very happy young girl looking forward to a bright and wonderful future. So nice to see!" Greta added the text to the bio on her Twitter account.

When I was painting these works, I noticed in a nationwide newspaper that Sara Sieppi had moved from Sörnäinen to central Helsinki. Secret photographs had been taken of her as her belongings were being carried down the street. The photographs revealed to readers what she and her movers were carrying at any given moment. For example, Sara was carrying some funny feather dusters in her arms.

When I was painting these works, I was delighted to find an interesting recipe in another nationwide newspaper. A rolled version of the traditional carrot cake had been developed. Since our family loves this treat, I baked a carrot cake roll for my child's birthday. The entire cake was a complete disaster. The sponge would not bend; it broke into pieces and crumbled. On top of that, the filling spilled over the edges.

When I was painting these works, I ordered wooden stretcher bars for my paintings from AliExpress in China. I still don't really understand what came over me. Including shipping, I paid almost three times as much for them as I would have paid for similar stretcher bars from Finnish or European suppliers. When the bars finally arrived, they were half as thick as the ones available here. I was so frustrated that I couldn't even bring myself to return them. The bars are still sitting untouched in the corner of my studio. I try not to look at them.

When I was painting these works, an acquaintance told me that climate change does not exist. Apparently, it is just a marketing gimmick. The climate has always varied, and there have been ice ages, for example. Around exactly the same time, I also read in a tabloid newspaper that a Member of the European Parliament shared exactly the same opinion.

Traditional
Carrot Cake

4 eggs
4 dl sugar
4 dl wheat flour
2 tsp baking powder
2 tsp baking soda
2 tsp vanilla sugar
2 tsp cinnamon
6 dl grated carrots
200 g melted butter

Frosting
60 g melted butter
100 g cream cheese
2 1/2 dl icing sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla sugar

Whisk the eggs and sugar until light and fluffy. Mix all the dry ingredients together and sift them into the batter. Finally, add the grated carrots and melted butter. Mix well and pour the batter onto a baking sheet. Bake at 175°C for approximately 35 minutes.

For the frosting, melt the butter, soften the cream cheese with a spoon and mix it into the butter. Add the icing sugar and season with vanilla sugar. When the cake has cooled slightly, spread the frosting over it. If desired, sprinkle chopped nuts on top.