The Wounded Wild – Anssi Jokiranta ja Anna Ruohonen

The creators of the Wounded Wild exhibition visited the wilderness of the 2000s, but instead of a human-free, ancient and untouched nature, they found a story about it. Wilderness areas have been seen as wild and timeless places, spaces beyond human influence. At the same time, the wilderness is a man-made illusion of a time and space that does not exist.

The works in the exhibition reflect on how the landscape should be viewed and what should be seen in it. Its black-and-white images were taken using the wet plate technology developed in the mid-1800s. The technique carries with it the history of photography: Each image on a plate is a unique trace of a moment that has passed. On the surfaces of the images, you can see the passage of time, the effect of coincidences and the traces of chemistry. The landscapes in the pictures begin to resemble something from the distant past, and at the same time, the imagery of the past can open up as a way of seeing the world.

Before wilderness areas became spaces for natural sciences and recreational use, they were something else. For example, in the languages of most northern indigenous peoples, the equivalent of the word wilderness is completely absent. It can be said that time created a need for wilderness: The distinction between man and nature is one of the central ideas of modernism. Especially the English word “wilderness” divides the lands into protected human-free areas and areas that are heavily exploited by humans.

The entries in the exhibition's travel diaries describe the development of the author's thinking in relation to northern nature and the role of humans in it. A diary is an object in which recorded observations, memories, ingrained natural science and bodily experiences illustrate the complex process through which perceptions of nature are formed, and how misleading it is to say that people are guided by rational reason. Thoughts about nature affect the way we treat nature. In the exhibition, even private, unfinished ideas become public.