The artist Mats Bergsmeden’s beautiful landscape pictures have a grim underside: every photograph is of a place where someone has lost their life in their struggle to get into the EU illegally.
Bergsmeden has followed the outlines of Europe, which are traced by a river running between Europe and what remains outside of it. He has photographed geographical locations in the European Union, but to illegal immigrants they look like the frontiers of a single “Fortress Europe”. In his project, begun in 2004, Bergsmeden has wanted to imitate 19th-century landscape paintings, and hence to refer the ideas of enlightenment, freedom and solidarity of that era.
This is Mats Bergsmeden’s first solo exhibition in Finland.
The Finnish Museum of Photography
Project Space
The Cable Factory, The Cable Factory, Tallberginkatu 1 G, 00180 Helsinki
