My favorite Finnish phase is "put the cat on the table." It's not about bringing felines into restaurants (although that's a thing, too: see below).
Rather, it means it means it's time to move a lurking issue front and center: to confront the hard questions. The museum field increasingly talks about the need to address "difficult issues," so I have been interested to see how that dynamic is playing out here. Finns pride themselves on speaking directly. I spent a day with a museum professional here, and when it was time for us to part, she wanted to be sure I understood that I was welcome to make a return visit if I wanted: "I mean it!" she emphasized. "I'm not an American!" I don't think she meant that we Americans are untrustworthy; more that we use social niceties to smooth off hard edges and glide past awkward moments (like "Thanks, I'll never see you again!"). I've learned to be careful about conversational lubricants like "Sounds great!" or "See you soon!"
I see a similar directness in museum exhibits here. Difficult issues are addressed not in a "look how brave we're being" tone but matter-of-factly. The Helsinki Art Museum, for instance, has an exhibition about aging. It's title, Vanhuus, means just "Old Age."
The content inside is equally straightforward. There are no rousing "age is no obstacle" messages; nor are there dire warnings about the end of days. Aging happens, the exhibit shows. One's body changes; one's scope of activity narrows; one's internal life shifts, too.
The exhibit includes a series of self-portraits that artist Alice Kaira made across forty years.
A stark video by Past Autio shows the view from a seemingly bedridden person's window across the seasons, accompanied by his sparse reflections on life:
In the exhibition Fear, the Helsinki City Museum brings more drama to the exploration of difficult issues. As much participatory art installation as history exhibit, the experience resists resolution at every turn. What exactly are we supposed to be afraid of here? One is never sure.
Disconcertingly, the exhibit opens with instructions to sign a waiver. The half sheet of paper warns against everything from loud noises to "unpleasant or distressing physical symptoms or moods." "Take this with you," a nearby label instructs.
Despite this unsettling start, Fear is most notable for what doesn't happen to you in the gallery. There is a constant sense of foreboding, fed by dark corners and a constant thrum of music, but there are no jump-out-at-you moments. Fears, the exhibit seems to suggest, are within us as much as outside. The first room is a tight space that invites us to share fears with each other:
In this sense, Fear is a "bring your own cat" exhibition: it invites you to bring out the worries and misgivings you are furtively carrying. This is not idle self-help, though. Fears unexamined, the exhibit suggests, can turn corrosive. Headphones play examples of hate speech that Helsinki residents report having heard on the city streets.
Subsequent rooms tap into more impersonal, institutional fears: a sanitized "Waiting Room" where we don't know what we're waiting for, a "Treatment Room" that seems to be permanently locked.
We stumble into a space where computer monitors show live views of the rooms that we just left. Who has been watching us? Was that waiver for real, or is the waiver itself the insidious threat?
Fear is frustrating, anti-climactic, and bewildering. In other words, it's dead on target in capturing what feels like to surface difficult questions for which there is no one answer.
Not all hard issues are treated in up-front ways in Finland. Compared to America's ongoing grapplings with race and cultural identity, I've been struck by how little public attention I've seen given to interactions between the indigenous Sami and the dominant Finnish culture. Are those encounters less fraught than I would have assumed, or are they not being addressed here yet? Immigration has been a major political and cultural issue here, but it hasn't been front and center in museums in the time that I've been here.
The lurking issues surrounding World War II in Finland have only recently begun to be addressed. My Fulbright host, Suzie Thomas of the University of Helsinki, has an ongoing project called Lapland's Dark Heritage. It explores the legacy of Germany's occupation of northern Finland through the traces of material culture its military left behind there. Just last month, the National Archives of Finland issued an 250-page independent report about Finnish volunteers in the German SS and their roles in atrocities relating to Jews, prisoners of war, and civilians.
The Finns, of course, don't have all the answers in dealing with difficult issues. But they seem to agree on the need to lay out a shared foundation grounded in fact. And they seem open to inviting everyone to have a seat at the table to consider the matter at hand. Then, let the fur fly where it may.
Comments