The Ring Was Found in the Field

26.9. - 18.10.2026, Napa Galleria, Rovaniemi, FI

Documentation: Simi Ruotsalainen

Interview in Lapin Kansa 5.10.2026

Tomato Field I, II & III

Scagliola (plaster, bone glue, pigments) 19 x 31 x 4,5 cm

In this series of reliefs, I use the plaster-based scagliola technique to explore connections between landscape, memory, and belonging. I approach landscape through objects that make our relationship to places tangible.

The shape of a ring is repeated on the walls of the exhibition space. The ring connects two places to which I relate in different ways: Lentvaris, my current home in Lithuania, and my grandparents’ home and farm on the banks of the Kemijoki river in Finland. The story of a ring found in a field has been lost, yet the object remains as a concrete fragment of a life and its relationship to place. It refers more broadly to the objects, memories, and stories through which we access the histories of places, always partially. My own lived relationship with these places becomes intertwined with family stories and the gap left around the ring. My relationship to place is formed between what has been lived, remembered, told, and what remains unknown.

The works do not attempt to recover individual stories or names. There is something here akin to plaster dust: the particles are real, yet the relationships between them, and the wholes they form, are in constant motion. A story cannot be recovered in its original form; instead, it is reconstructed.

Scagliola, a plaster-based stone imitation technique dating back to the Baroque period, is part of the history of Lithuania, where I currently live: stone was imitated in an environment where it was not readily available. Working with imitation stone parallels my thinking about the past: just like the material, a narrative cannot be restored to its original form, but is reconstructed. The polished, glossy surface of scagliola can appear distancing, almost closed, and through engraving I have tried to carve out something tactile, something that only faintly emerges.