Statuomania exhibition reflects on the nature and legitimacy of monuments

Statuomania will open in the Halli exhibition space of the Kunsthalle Seinäjoki on January 24th 2025. The exhibition is curated by Porin kulttuurisäätö collective. The artists in the exhibition are Sarah-Mecca Abdourahman, Henri Airo, Benjamin Orlow, Oskari Ruuska, Enni Vekkeli, and Tekla Vály and Tereza Holubová of the Valreza Collective.

Statuomania as a name refers to the compulsive need to install public monuments, statues and sculptures. The name is primarily associated with nationalist projects and the development of nation-states and nation-feelings through various monuments, depictions of great men and other emblems.

In the Statuomania exhibition curated by Porin kulttuurisäätö, the nature of memorials and the processes involved are being reflected – who has the right to celebrated and immortalized memories and visibility, whose memories are heard and taken into account? Who is in charge of urban space and under what conditions can these regulations be breached? Public art reflects society’s values, but also shows the limits of its imagination.

The planning of the exhibition started some years ago when the City of Seinäjoki was creating a new policy programme for public art, procurement procedures for commissioning public art were developing and first commissions following the programme were becoming reality. Could public art, including memorial traditions, practices and power structures around it, its’ impact of the urban environment and different communities, be reflected in a contemporary art exhibition? An idea about an exhibition was born, and Porin kulttuurisäätö collective was invited to curate it. Porin kulttuurisäätö (Anna Jensen, Eliisa Suvanto, and Sanna Ritvanen) is driven by research, site-specificity and activism. Previous exhibitions have taken place, for example, in Kaisaniemi Botanic Garden, Yyteri dunes, and various urban spaces.

The exhibition constructs its own imaginary public space, in which everyone’s representation and participation is constantly and equally negotiable, and where this representation and participation is not divided according to the division of power that has been carried out in the past. The exhibition emphasizes the aesthetical and experiential: it explores forms and ideas that can in turn shape what our future looks and feels like.

The works in the exhibition declare themselves as monuments and fulfill their function by creating places of encounter and community. In doing so, they naturalize, justify and normalize the narratives, events and histories they tell, which are not represented by existing monuments. They do not even pretend to be truths set in stone, but by suggesting, questioning, implying, guiding and seeking ways of expressing what has not yet been articulated the works give shape for transformations and changes.

The openinging event of the exhibition will take place on Friday 24.1.2025 at 17:00 during the Winter Day of the Kalevan Navetta. The exhibition will be open to the public from 25.1. to 31.5.2025.