Finnish Tango + Finland Station Curated by Victor Zamudio-Taylor March 19 – April 17, 2004

First of a three-year series on contemporary art from Finland at White Box, “Finnish Tango Show” features work of Pekka Niskanen and Jari Silomaki. “Finnish Tango Show” refers to the embracing of the Argentine urban and popular song and dance in Finland. The tango was transformed through its adaptation and was made part of the inventory of expressions of national culture of the nascent nation. These translational procedures play a key role in the fashioning of cultural identities of the self and narratives on the nation, namely what is “Finnish” about Finland. “Finnish Tango Show” highlights the quests of contemporary artists operating within and against the dynamics of national and post national cultures in a global context. The exhibition suggests that translational strategies are markers of difference that create spaces of resistance and critique.

Pekka Niskanen will host the NY premiere of his large-scale film and audio work entitled, “Ryokan Mother Tongue”. Jari Silomaki exhibits for the first time in the US his seminal quasi-cinematic photo series, “Rehearsals for Adulthood”, and a mixture of black and white as well as color images in diverse formats. Works from his ongoing series, “The Weather Diaries” text image works that juxtapose the personal with international current events.

“Finland Station” launches White Box’s new program (VIDEOBOX) in its street level window. Curated by Ingrid Chu. Louky Keijsers and Victor Zamudio-Taylor, the first of Ms. Chu’s and Ms. Keijser’s collaborative Curatorial (VIDEOBOX) program is entitled “The Unscene”. “The Unscene” presents “Finland Station” with works by two emerging international artists. Sari Tervaniemi will premiere her “The Vanishing Scheme”, a poetic piece that deals with issues germane to sexuality, gender and is set in a modernist interior with urban references, Tero Malinen’s U.S. premiere entitled “Trial”, a short piece that references the hyper-masculine thrasher genre, engages subjectivity, endurance and the appropriation of social spaces by urban subcultures, in particular youth. Also part of (VIDEOBOX), shown inside White Box‘s main exhibition space during the “Finnish Tango Show“, will be the New York debut of Tellervo Kalleinen’s “White Spot”, an ongoing project resulting from Helsinki newspaper ads in which the artist invited the general public to direct a film scene in an empty white gallery space. The individuals who accepted were asked, as the sole requirement, to cast Ms. Kalleinen in one of the film’s roles. To date, the film’s compilation alternates the humorous and sad, fantasies and realities, aspirations and desires, of a group of ordinary citizens,The exhibition is generously funded by FRAME, Finnish Fund for Art Exchange with additional support from Herman Miller and Charles Morrow Associates Inc.

For further information and/or images please contact White Box at 212-714-2347.