Photographer Sofia Okkonen and sculptor Kristina Sedlerova Villanen address Sinne gallery with a site-specific approach. SUGARTRAP is a visual conversation and an artistic collaboration where tension is formed between the large-format photographic prints and heavy sculptures spread across the space. The encounter of photographs and sculptures creates an entity which deconstructs and comments on romantic love and, above all, the time-bound nature and experience of this sweet dream-wired relationship, with its weak points and the suffocating ideological and structural models around it. The materials of the works in the exhibition, such as stone, metal, paper, toffee and a bit of salt can be seen as gentle nods and gestures towards love or as an irony on the theme.

What unites Okkonen and Sedlerova Villanen as artists, is the un-earthing and picking of emotional locks. Okkonen’s works in the exhibition are based on her earlier series of photographs titled Honey, Please, in which she has approached themes such as fertility, reproduction, tenderness and the capacity for loving compassion. Simultaneously, Sedlerova Villanen tests her own position on the scale of geological time, and exposes the prevailing hierarchical economic-political order and its values to high pressure.

Okkonen and Sedlerova Villanen stimulate the space of Sinne and take the viewer on a journey to the knots and dusty corners where sensitivity and vulnerability may lie. Those become the entrance, the key, to SUGARTRAP. The work points to our inner selves and how social norms and traditions cling to us as we navigate between expectations, loves and perpetual change. The physical pieces move too; some of Okkonen’s large photographs are tilted and seem to levitate. One photograph is on the floor, and on top of it is a sculpture by Sedlerova Villanen that spreads organically through the space. The stacks of paper hint at repetition and act as pedestals for a granite work covered in toffee.

Sofia Okkonen

Sofia Okkonen (b. 1987) lives and works in Helsinki. She received her Master’s degree from Aalto University’s photography course in 2017. She does staged photography and also fashion-photography assignments and directing. In 2021, her solo exhibition Honey, Please was shown at Turku Art Hall and in the AHJO Exhibition Space at Espoo Cultural Centre. In 2017, her photograph series Rose was in a solo exhibition at the Finnish Museum of Photography. Since 2017, she has participated in international exhibitions in Japan, France, Spain, Austria, Portugal and Croatia.

Kristina Sedlerova Villanen

Kristina Sedlerova Villanen (b. 1987) lives and works in Helsinki and Brussels. In 2015, she graduated with an MA in Scenography from Aalto University’s School of Art, Design and Architecture. She gained an MFA in Sculpture from the Academy of Fine Arts, Helsinki in 2016. From 2019 to 2020, she was an artist-in-residence at the Jan van Eyck Academie in Maastricht. She has participated in group exhibitions in Finland and abroad, including Pori Biennale 2022, Helsinki; Jan van Eyck Open Studios, Maastricht, The Netherlands; Titanik, Turku, Finland; and Outo Olo, Helsinki. She has had solo exhibitions at: P/////AKT, Amsterdam; KULT XL Ateliers, Brussels; Kunsthal Extra City, Antwerp, Belgium; Oksasenkatu 11, Helsinki; and MUU Kaapeli, Helsinki.

The exhibition has been supported by: 
Arts Promotion Centre Finland, Konstsamfundet, Kone Foundation