Jari Silomäki

Rehearsals for adulthood

The series includes small sub-narratives, made up of individual and paired photographs, forming a whole in the mind of the viewer. The story is also constructed on other narrative levels: through interrelationships between texts, photographs, and the order of presentation.

The cinematic story has been pre-scripted and staged. The character featured in the photographs is not the artist himself, but an actor, just like all the other characters in the work. The diary-like texts about everyday existence, the first-person narrative, and allowing the viewer into the main character's private space, such as through self-portraits, produce an accurate illusion of reality. The boundary between fact and fiction in the photographs remains blurred.

Jari Silomäki, a graduate from the University of Art and Design Helsinki and currently a postgraduate student at Aalto University, is a photographic artist whose work concentrates on exploring new forms of documentary photography. The photographs in the exhibition are original gelatin silver prints from 1997 to 2001.

The exhibition is part of the Art Testers project where 8th-graders around Finland get free visits to cultural institutions. The project is funded by the Finnish Cultural Foundation and the Swedish Cultural Foundation in Finland. The Finnish Museum of Photography, Zodiak – Center for New Dance, the Theatre Museum, and the Helsinki Artists' Association participate in the project with their joint Art Day at the Cable Factory event, at which 8th-graders and their teachers get to meet professionals in photography, dance, theatre and visual arts, and experience their work.