"Le feu au lac" avec Grap's à la Galerie d'art contemporain d'Auvers-sur-Oise du 2 mars au 19 mai - "Aurores boréales" au Centre culturel Rachel Félix à Montmorency du 12 mars au 5 avril

"Fenêtre sur un rêve"

2009 Galerie Virka, Helsinki, Finlande


From 8 to 27 July 2009, Virka Gallery’s bijous corner exhibition space at Helsinki’s City Hall will be hosting a display of photographs by Minna Kokko. The moving images, described as ”dream windows” by the Paris-based, Finnish-born artist, reflect her personal balancing act between two countries and cultures.

Minna Kokko (b. 1968) has spent the best part of the past two decades living in France, where she has studied photography at Paris’ Ecole des Gobelins and elsewhere. She turned her attention to photography five years ago, following a creative period spent pursuing painting and drawing.

Minna Kokko’s own identity and her role in shaping the identities of her children have inspired the photographs seen in this Virka Gallery exhibition. The images weave together two separate worlds with fresh and unexpected results, blending together medieval French monastery settings with glimpses of present-day Helsinki. The ”dreamer” they depict is the artist’s own daughter – a child of two countries and cultures and yet forever in limbo between them.

”The ”dream windows” in this exhibition capture something of my own identity whilst depicting something entirely independent and separate that I hope will whisk the visitors on a journey into their own inner selves. I have sought to capture emotions, memories, reminisces of forgotten moments hidden within us.”

The "Window onto a dream" exhibition is Minna Kokko’s third in the Finnish capital: last summer she exhibited at the Bulevardin Kahvisalonki café on the theme of Parisian Moments and earlier this year held an exhibition titled Paris-Helsinki at the city’s French Cultural Centre.

The photographs featured in this exhibition are printed on Dibond in Germany, as devised by the Finnish company Mood.