Heli Rekula

Heli Rekula was appointed Professor at Subject Area Photography for a six-year period October 2009.

Visual artist Heli Rekula (b. 1963 in Helsinki) works with lens-based media: Photography, film, video. She has a varied background as visual artist and teaching at art academic institutions in Finland and abroad. Heli Rekula´s works have over the past 20 years been exhibited extensively internationally. She participated in the 2001 Venice Biennale, the main exhibitionPlateau of Humankind, curated by Harald Szeemann. In 2002 she was the recipient of the Ars Fennica Award and participated the touring exhibition with other nominees: Jacob Dahlgren (SWE), Tal R (DK) and Saara Ekström (FIN).

Heli Rekula´s extensive retrospective DESERT, works from 1989-2004,was on display at the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma for 3 monts in the spring of 2005. It took place at museum´s 4^th and 5^th floors. The same year, 2005, she was awarded the State Prize for Photography. In 2011 Rekula was short listed for the Carnegie Art Award 2012 and participated in the touring exhibition in Oslo, Stockholm, Helsinki and Copenhagen.

Heli Rekula currently lives and works in Helsinki and in Bergen, where she has been a Professor of Photography at Bergen Academy of Art and Design, Department of Fine Arts, since autumn 2009.

Photography is one media and a tool within the field of fine arts. As a way of communication, it has a feel and a tone which separates it from other artistic expressions. Furthermore, it has the body of history and theory and artistic discourse, which makes the field even more challenging.

Heli Rekula works in parallel, side by side with two lens based medias; still images in the form of photography and moving images in the form of video and film. A film or videoinstallation is also a spatial presentation, involving built elements and structures as part of a piece. There is an immediate connection between the film and video works and the themes and visual aesthetics she works with within photography.

In terms of subject matter, her work can be devided into two categories: staged-works and landscape-works. The categorization here originates from two different kinds of practices in the working process.   

Areas of Expertise
Photography, film, video, installation. Video also as spatial installation involving built elements and structures as part of a piece.


Artistic Research Focus
The research is discussing various views on the relation of work processes and the final presented work of art in photography and thematically related work in film and video.

Artistic Research Projects
Rekula is currently working paralell with several Artistic Research projects of which one is investigating the relationship between work processes and the finalized work of art object in lense based media.

The more recent project is looking into methods and practises in landscape themed photography and video. Untill now Heli Rekula has presented single images of various landscapes in different combinations, different presentations and exhibitions, allowing the photographic recordings, ´the notes´ to pass on their stories. Now the origin of the work in progress is in a singular place, a landscape, which will no longer hold only as ´experiential note´ but operates as a source and a reference to the whole body of work to be done.

The outcome of these projects will be presented in 2013, at shared and solo exhibitions in Norway and abroad. Since both projects are ongoing, these presentations are not conclusions, but more to be seen as results in-between these research processess.

Dissemination

Essays by Heli Rekula
Heli Rekula:At the Boundary of the Body; article pp. 89-99 + interview by Mika Hannula pp. 100-106;            TALKIN' LOUD & SAYIN' SOMETHING - Four Perspectives of Artistic Research.Writers: Mika Hannula (curator), Sopawan Boonnimitra, Jacqueline Donachie,  Annica Karlsson Rixon  & Anna Viola Hallberg, Heli Rekula.Art Monitor, A Journal on Artistic Research/ No 4 / 2008.

Heli Rekula:Inscriptions of Reality;article pp. 88-89,The Artist´s Knowledge 2- Research at The Finnish Academy of Fine Arts. The Finnish Academy of Fine Arts, Helsinki, 2008.

Heli Rekula:Kokemuksen nimeämätön tila/The Unnamed Space of Experience; article pp. 110-133, TOISAALTA TÄSSÄ/HERE THEN, Valokuva teoksena ja tutkimuksena / The photograph as Work of Art and as Research.Writers: Mika Elo, Pertti Kekarainen, Marjaana Kella, Harri Laakso ja Heli Rekula.Publication series of University of Art and Design Helsinki B 83 / The Finnish Academy of Fine Arts, 2007.

Heli Rekula:The Absent Body;article pp. 68-69,The Artist´s Knowledge 1 - Research at The Finnish Academy of Fine Arts.The Finnish Academy of Fine Arts, Helsinki, 2006.

Further reading

Heli Rekula and Stein Rønning part of Carnegie Art Award at Stenersen (2011)

Heli Rekula new Professor at Subject Area Photography (2