I generally favor actual historical voices in exhibitions instead of generic ones, but this week I visited an exhibit that made good use of composite characters: Carefree Capital: Scenes from 1920s Helsinki, at Villa Hakasami, one of the satellite sites of the Helsinki City Museum, where I'm working.
These characters, represented in life-sized photos, appear in each section and, via speech bubbles, give their opinions on the subject at hand. The liberated Elsa is excited about the partying of the Prohibition era; Alli, very involved in the Christian temperance movement, sneers at the wilder goings-on in the city. The descriptions are specific: "Masa is a 28-year-old manual laborer who was interned in a prison camp for the Reds after the Finnish Civil War"; he recently has regained his voting privileges; he works as a machinist for a Finnish engineering firm; in his free time he enjoys dancing at a local club. And, of course, the descriptions are trilingual--Finnish, Swedish, English (it's interesting how quickly one gets used to that).
Things get most interesting in a room that depicts the many secrets that people carried during this uncertain time. The room shows wallpaper that is literally peeling to reveal hidden layers: Russian roots, divorces, alcohol problems, scientific racism.
Again, our characters appear to share their perspectives. Young Nikke relates that people "call me bad names on the street" because he's Russian: "I speak Finnish so nobody pushes me around." Noting the rise in divorces, Alli sniffs, "I had a husband once, a useless ne'er-do-well. Then the Lord had mercy on me and relieved my burden. We women have to...fight for the moral decency of our men...."
The main label in the room makes the point somewhat more lyrically: "The ghosts of the past come back to haunt us. The future is sometimes a daunting prospect. What is that strange smell coming from the cracks in the floor?...Hang in there. If the paper on the wall starts to peel off, a stronger paste is needed to patch it up....Spread the spackle on a bit thicker if you must."
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