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Kuvasto

In the Wintergarden

Lena Séraphin

Päiväkoti Toivo, Apteekkarinraitti 8, 00790 Helsinki

Indoor Sculpture

Lena Séraphin’s (b. 1962) photograph In the Wintergarden is mounted on a sliding door in the hallway of Toivo Daycare Centre. Photographed in the Helsinki Winter Garden, the picture shows a flagstone path lined with plants, a pool, and the lower half of a person.

Séraphin says she is uncomfortable with the term “photograph”, even though the work is based on one. She prefers to think of it as a spatial piece, even an installation. In planning the work, she was inspired by baroque still lifes, above all the symbols employed in them. “And so I included insects in my work: a beetle, a grasshopper, a fly, and a butterfly. I have altered their scale to make them bigger, the biggest being the fly. Working on the piece in my studio, I was struck by the idea that I was signing my work with a flying fly. However, the insects are merely details, and my main concern was to emphasise and enliven the perspective. The choice of motif is closely related to the inner traditions of painting, the notion that an image is a window unto another world that is like ours yet not the same. The experience of space and participation is important to me, and I hope that comes across in my work.”

The work was produced under the Percent for Art programme, and it belongs to the collection of the City of Helsinki, managed by HAM Helsinki Art Museum.

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