海勒

Själö means island of souls, and no name could be more fitting for the island in the Baltic Sea, which for centuries was a last stop for women who were considered social outcasts and who are forgotten today. They were forcibly placed in a closed institution to be studied, measured and weighed - exactly in the way that nature itself was starting to be examined around the same time. Today, the place is a research centre. A young female scientist collects samples on the island, while the whispering voices of the past and never-sent letters echo in the empty hallways. The Finnish artist Lotta Petronella is personally invested in writing the unknown history of the nameless women, and she does so through the traces left by the past. Both in the archives, medicine cabinets and landscapes around the old hospital. In a subdued and very Nordic aesthetic, Petronella lets the void speak. The play of light in a corridor and the fading writing of an old document is the kind of stuff her vision is made of.