Leena Valkeapää & Oula A. Valkeapää
Manifestations
2017
video, duration: 15.00
Manifestations is a compilation of text messages and emails Oula A. Valkeapää sends his partner Leena. The verbal and visual messages describe Oula’s Sami background and his life with reindeers. They reveal the parallel existence of the everyday and the mysterious through Oula’s experiences. The messages catalogue various events in an often dream-like reality. They include documentary footage, photography, poetry and less formal texts. The two different media convey knowledge of the Sami culture and its mysticism, which are documented by the poetry of the work. Manifestations is a dialogic work produced by two artists. Leena’s role is to be an inspiring and inquisitive receiver. She also records and edits material produced by Oula and supplements Oula’s narratives with her own images. Manifestations is a collage where word and image are conjoined in an intensive meditation on being. The manifestations of the work also create an air of questioning where the questions become a part of life, without the need to find clear answers. Living with questions and the mystery of life creates a space for creativity.
Leena and Oula A. Valkeapää live on the fells of northern Lapland where no roads can reach them and work together surrounded by natural phenomena. Leena Valkeapää works as an environmental artist and Oula A. Valkeapää continues his family’s tradition of reindeer herding.