The Serlachius Project, 2025 

photographs, analogue films, material print, wood, paper

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The Serlachius Project is an artistic tracing and site-specific approach to the environment and history of Mänttä which is closely linked to the Serlachius family and its company.

Where to start such an exploration? With the ‘founders‘ who can only tell their story and talk about past happenings and circumstances through old photographs, collected objects and other archival materials?

And what do these documents tell us? What do they evoke in each individual? Do they remind us of own stories and images?

In addition, the landscape is a carrier of memories as well, together with its living beings – human and more-than-human actors who are much older and in some cases may be actual witnesses.
 

The work attempts to connect different periods of time and actors in an artistic-playful way. Fragments of archival materials and collection items are combined with current images of the surrounding, natural materials, and otherwise hidden details of non-human actors of the environment which have been captured by photochemical processes including lake water, plant materials and microorganisms. 
Different compositions with gaps and overlays as well as new visual connections and stories are evoked.