Iida Jonsson and Ssi Saarinen are a Berlin-based artist duo from the Åland Islands in the Finnish Archipelago. Their research-based practice is dedicated to developing an expanded understanding of the non-binary. They pursue this through multi-layered investigations into perceived dualisms, questioning received narratives around the natural and the built environment, institutional and geological history, and national and individual identity. Projects often span multiple years and evolve across a variety of media, with an emphasis on the perspective of the camera operator. Formally trained as cinematographers, Jonsson and Saarinen use film, photography, and the embodied movement of the camera - often shooting hand-held, without stabilizing devices, creating a choreography of and for the lens. They combine their cinematographic assays with archival materials, found objects and artifacts, original field research, and collaborations with sound artists and performers to translate these ongoing studies into formats for public display, with an emphasis on site-specific installations.
As such, their work operates within, outside, and between the walls of the “institution,” broadly defined — revealing the contours of the museum, the university, the archive, the state, and the edifice that is the art world in order to permeate them, opening new doors to interpretation and experience of the histories, ideas, and narrative environments that surround and structure life.
Suzanne, Terrarium, Greywater, Fuck U, Live at Volksbühne, and Silt were made with artist Ona Julija Lukas Steponaitytė. Vers le Blanc was made with musician Hannes Ferm. Data Free Zone was made with researcher Victoria Harnesk.
The western part of Norrbotten County, a mountainous area and the largest and northernmost county in Sweden, is often referred to as “Europe’s last wilderness,” part of a narrative cultivated by politicians and contemporary cartographers to instrumentalize a region that is anything but “wild,” effacing a rich human and geological history.
Jonsson & Saarinen consider the inherently political use of archives that is key to maintaining the colonial status quo, using data - and how data is selectively circulated - as a starting point to unlock new ways of seeing and narrating individual and collective experience.
Operating as researchers both in the archive and in the field, Jonsson & Saarinen deploy original data gathered through photography, film, and interviews alongside historical documents including primary and secondary source material, institutional and private image archives, court transcriptions, journals, historical maps, and GPS data. The result is a multi-layered counter-cartography that challenges the existing “map” and demographic analyses through re-presentation.
Data Free Zone, Publication spreads, KIN Museum of Contemporary Art, Kiruna SE, 2023
Data Free Zone
As a printed object, Data Free Zone serves as an alternative atlas, re-cataloguing information relative to issues of memory and trauma, inclusion and exclusion, colonial and de-colonial modes of cultural production and acquisition, and the distribution and marketing of knowledge. The publication daylights invisible and otherwise complex or inaccessible data, providing a critical means to navigate a global knowledge economy.
Data Free Zone, Áhkájávrre Map (10,000 copies), KIN Museum of Contemporary Art, Kiruna SE, 2023
Data Free Zone, Publication spread, KIN Museum of Contemporary Art, Kiruna SE, 2023
Depressions & Elevations In the early 20th century, Swedish glaciologist Axel Hamberg travelled to Sarek, a mountain massif within a national park in Sápmi, to produce his first cartographic representation of the region. Finalized in 1922, his series of influential maps effectively reorganized the landscape according to a “scientific” bias that privileged peaks and glaciers. Depressions and Elevations turns toward the romantic, nationalized image of Sarek, tracing a hierarchical shift in geographic representation in which the gaze shifted from valleys, once valued as sites of agricultural productivity, to peaks: objects of conquest. Shot along the region’s most visited trekking and skiing routes, the film uses the trail as a choreography for camera movement, bringing into focus the long-standing preoccupation with peaks evidenced in tourism materials, landscape painting, and even regional architecture.
Depressions & Elevations, Installation view. KIN Museum of Contemporary Art, Kiruna SE, 2023
Vanishing Points A series of foils applied to the museum windows and large glass plates features enlarged and restored tourist images from Sweden’s most popular hiking destination, the King’s Trail, an area historically entangled with political exploitation projects and national romantic symbolism. Alongside Depressions & Elevations, the presentation highlights the use of the landscape as a curated backdrop, created to bolster the colonial gaze of Swedish scientists. The work exposes how the idealized portrayal of untouched wilderness conceals the land’s complex histories and how national myths obscure political violence, critiquing the erasure of cultural and political contexts, questioning the narratives that shape our understanding of these landscapes.
Vanishing Points, Window Foilings, KIN Museum of Contemporary Art, Kiruna SE, 2023.
Vanishing Points, Window Foilings, KIN Museum of Contemporary Art, Kiruna SE, 2023.
Vanishing Points, Window Foilings, KIN Museum of Contemporary Art, Kiruna SE, 2023.
Vanishing Points, Window Foilings, KIN Museum of Contemporary Art, Kiruna SE, 2023.