At Home in Art

What is left when everything is lost? Where is home when the main building of the manor is destroyed in a fire or the newly completed house is left at the feet of the war while the father is fighting at the front? The exhibition presented this year, curated in accordance with the "home" theme of the city of Vantaa, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary, explores the history of the invisible home. The members of the Ramsay and Pullinen families, who lived in Nissbacka, share similar experiences in the 1930s, and at the center of this experience is the loss of their home - something that is sadly relevant even in our time.

The exhibition blurs the boundary between private and public. The exhibited artefacts map a hundred years of history, from the phases of the Ramsay family to the years of Pullinen, and the roles of art in these intersections and social contexts. Few objects from the old manor's time have been preserved, because practically everything was destroyed in the fire of the main building in December 1934. That is why the greater value has been given to the fragments and fragments that have been preserved: the fragment of a coffee cup found in the flower bed of the old main building from the time of Jakob de la Motte in 1796, the Russian rule found in the ashes of the fire an early military coat button with the Ramsay family motto "ora & labora" (= work and pray) and other rare objects.