POST MORTEM – Juha Allan Ekholm
POST MORTEM – AUTOPSY
Post mortem (Lat.) means “after death” or “autopsy.” Figuratively or humorously, it can also refer to an evaluation of something after its failure.
The postmodern human has become detached from the presence of death and loss. A hedonistic lifestyle that prioritizes personal pleasures and self-indulgence as the highest values fails to acknowledge the inevitability of death when asking whether there is life after death. But what does that question even matter, when one could instead ask whether there is life before death?
The same question can be asked as an artist. The artist lives in a performance-driven society just like practitioners of many other professions—with the crucial difference that they must constantly fight for the justification of their work. Throughout their entire life. If they succeed and prevail, they earn the right to create their images. If they grow tired and falter, the daggers are surprisingly close. The awareness of this drives the artist into an increasingly narrow space, where all resources must be harnessed to excel in their work and to live as a professional artist. More broadly speaking, to live a life that outwardly resembles that of a professional artist.
POST MORTEM is an exhibition that does not offer a grand narrative or the enchanting ultimatum of the artist’s story. The artist constructs projects through projection, building bridges between themselves and their art. In the process of shaping their thoughts into a form accessible to an audience, the artist simultaneously resets the narrative of their own life.
POST MORTEM reveals the artist’s life unembellished, beyond the projects. It offers the audience the most personal photographs of a photographic artist at work—work that has only just begun. The ability to convey emotions grows gradually with an increasing understanding of the medium. As an artist’s life continues, its darkest shades inevitably become part of it as well.
Some of the works in this exhibition were previously shown last summer under the artist alias Per Sonne in the exhibitions PROVOCATION ON HELSINGINKATU and ATONEMENT AND APOLOGY. These works, as well as the entire exhibition, will for the first time be presented under the artist’s real signature.
Juha Allan Ekholm is known for his photographic work documenting life in Finnish rental housing suburbs in the 1990s and 2000s—work he carried out by immersing himself in the communities he photographed. He has participated in over 70 group and collective exhibitions in Finland and across Europe, representing Finland six times. Since the 2000s, his practice has also included urban art projects, with social photography as his primary medium. Ekholm has held nearly 40 solo exhibitions, and his works are included in 15 public collections in Finland, Europe, and the USA.
His work was last exhibited at Poriginal Gallery in 2004.
Translated with ChatGPT