Hannaleena Heiska
Shadows and Stardust

07. - 30.08.2015

For my Shadows and Stardust exhibition I have drawn observatories, icebergs and mirror-image-like, kaleidoscopic charcoal drawings. The technique I use here is technically surprisingly reminiscent of my way of painting: I start by blackening the whole sheet of paper with charcoal, after which, the image is formed by removing material with a kneaded eraser and chamois leather.

What fascinates me about drawing with charcoal is how revealing it is, and how unforgiving. Charcoal gives a black-white-grey scale that has none of the explosive impact – the special effects – of colours. It is also closely bound up with skill and practice. Drawing is annoyingly difficult, but you can enjoy it in a masochistic sort of way.

Charcoal’s main constituent, carbon, is a key component of organic substances, the lifecycle, and of life itself. In my charcoal drawings I want to depict something timeless and boundless, something that is hard to grasp or impossible to put into words. In a variant of the writer Ernest Hemingway’s iceberg technique, there is a host of meanings unseen beneath the surface, and I want the exhibition as a whole to create a subtly oppressive atmosphere.

The buildings that appear in my drawings have been taken from various parts of the world and in their own way constitute a network of mechanical eyes that encircles the globe. They are like modern cathedrals in which people gaze into the unknown and into the mystery of the universe. Lone buildings surrounded by darkness.

The works have been inspired by artificial intelligence, the future, and the possibility of life after death. The fragility and transitoriness of human life. Human beings are made of stardust. We are like lone icebergs drifting in the emptiness and melting to become part of the lifecycle. So, could a human being carry on living virtually or is the multiverse a possibility? Could it be that we carry on existing in another dimension after death, or that we simultaneously exist somewhere else at this very moment?

According to one theory in physics, our world is a hologram, like a film projected onto a screen, which also explains our supernatural, mystical and spiritual experiences. This hologram universe would thus have levels that are imperceptible to our consciousness. One (pseudo-scientific) article, meanwhile, says that our consciousness is unlocated, i.e. when our physical body dies, our consciousness does not die, but goes over to some other universe. I find that thought comforting.

Hannaleena Heiska


Welcome to a discussion with Hannaleena Heiska and curator Mika Hannula at the Gallery on Saturday, 22 August at 2 pm.

Hannaleena Heiska (b. 1973, Oulu) graduated from the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts in 2006, and has held solo exhibitions and participated in collective exhibitions in Finland and abroad. Her first solo show in Sweden is currently at Gothenburg Museum of Art until 23 August 2015. Other international exhibitions include: Espace Louis Vuitton Gallery, Tokyo; CAC - Contemporary Art Centre, Vilnius; Bomuldsfabriken kunsthall, Norway‚ and Momentum – Nordic Biennial of Contemporary Art, Norway. She was a candidate for the Ars Fennica award in 2011 and has works in major public collections, including: Gothenburg Museum of Art; Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, Helsinki; and the Saastamoinen Foundation Art Collection. Heiska’s videoworks have been shown at numerous film and media-art festivals in Europe.

A special thank you to the Oskar Öflunds Stiftelse and the Kuvasto copyright society for artists working in the visual arts for their support for Heiska’s work.