Collage on MDF
1000 x 50 cm (in 10 parts)
2012

About the work

I found a book called Unser Österreich from a flea market in Berlin.  It was a German propaganda publication from 1938, a book that contained black and white pictures of a country that shortly thereafter became part of the Nazi empire.

I cut the pictures out of the book and with collage technique turned them into a landscape. It was sort of an impossible puzzle to complete as the pieces didn’t match,  a slow manual process to fit the pieces together. The result is a 10-meter long collage that is seemingly cohesive, yet at the same time the artificial nature of the landscape is obvious. This creates the perception that the piece forms a cohesive picture one moment and a fragmented one the next. When looking at the work, you can notice your own desire to see something cohesive and on the other hand something imperfect.

This work was part of my solo exhibition Eheä Maailma aka Cohesive World exhibited together with the collage works Postcard from nowhere, Under the Alps, Aavan meren tuolla puolen and Uljas kaupunki.