The body of work is based on the life of my great-grandmother.

Siiri, a mother of six and an artistically talented woman, fell ill with sleeping sickness, Encephalitis Lethargica, in 1923. She never recovered, and spent the last 18 years of her life in the Pitkäniemi psychiatric hospital.

I interpret Siiri’s fate as her descendant, and as a woman who has been able to make choices in her life. I have wanted to bring into my works the interplay between life and death, light and darkness. Through this project I have developed a relationship with Siiri and the emotions her story evokes in me—grief, longing, and anger, but also great love and the necessity of letting go.

I have created sets, reconstructed Siiri’s clothing, and collected objects that build a new, imagined reality through photographs, moving images, and sculptures. At the center of the body of work is an old, worn wooden chair obtained from the hospital and a photograph I took in the garden of Pitkäniemi. There, in peace and quiet, sits the bride.

The project addresses the fate of many of Siiri’s contemporaries—women who had no freedom to choose.