Visual arts A special censorship dispute in Helsinki’s gallery, Chris af Enehielm’s removed works were returned to the wall a week later – Gallery: “There is a witch hunt in our time”

Helsinki art gallery Galerie Forsblom has been in the midst of a small-scale controversy over the past week.

It is a visual artist Cris af Enehielmin November 25 opening East of Eden exhibition, about which the artist and the gallery disagreed. af Enehielm felt that his four works were censored in the exhibition because they were considered racist and colonial.

However, according to the gallery, it was a purely visual and hanging decision.

The exhibition was open for less than a week without these four works, but the works removed today, Wednesday, will be returned to the exhibition.

When Helsingin Sanomat talked to af Enehielm about the beginning of the week, he felt that he had been mistreated.

“The paintings were taken off the wall without asking permission while I was having lunch,” Af Enehielm says.

“I am in shock and extremely hurt. This act feels so violent. ”

He emphasizes that he himself would have been willing to discuss the works if they had provoked reactions in the audience.

“I think the artist himself should be able to take responsibility for his work. If an artist suffers, he is responsible for it. ”

Af Enehielmi was particularly offended that he was considered a racist, despite years of multicultural work and a self-conscious person. The work now in the exhibition has been completed this year, but he has been painting on Africa for years.

The role models are people he has met and drawn on his travels, but the works are based on imagination.

“It was important to me that the characters in my works are not passive objects of gaze, but look back at the viewer who is looking at them. I can almost hear one of them asking ‘what are you doing’. ”

He has also wanted to portray a person in such a way that he or she may not see gender, for example.

“It’s not so accurate in my work whether it’s a man, a woman, a girl or a boy. He can be both. ”

Af Enehielm says that at the opening of his exhibition, there were dozens of artists from different cultures who saw the removed works in the back room of the gallery and could not understand that there was anything questionable in them, on the contrary.

When Helsingin Sanomat reached the gallery on Wednesday Kaj Forsblomin, he was just hanging terrible works back in the exhibition.

“The gallery has decided to put the works on display so no one has a reason to complain,” he says over the phone.

However, Forsblom would like to emphasize that whenever exhibitions are held in museums or galleries, not all of an artist’s work can be displayed at the same time. In Af Enehielm’s exhibition, the works are grouped into three different spaces according to their themes, and those four temporarily removed works were too many to keep the themes clear.

“One room of the exhibition has a circus theme, another is impressionistic and the third is travel. We took four out of the works because the travel theme didn’t fit the theme of the Impressionist Room, ”he says.

“We never censor, but we can’t always put all the work on display because the wall space is limited. As a gallerist, I accept aesthetics, no matter how the artist works. ”

He cancels immediately rumors that the works had been censored because they had been considered racist.

“It wasn’t about that in any case. I think if a person travels to Africa, they get to take photos there and show them to others. It won’t be anything if a photographer or painter isn’t allowed to make an exhibition they see, ”says Forsblom.

Kaj Forsblom has been in the industry for 44 years and does not remember ever having risen to the “halo” that not all of the artist’s intended works will be on display in the final exhibition.

“There is a witch-hunt in our time and I don’t want any confrontation in Finland. No man can do anything to his skin color, and it doesn’t matter to me. Above all, painting is about art and its quality, and sometimes also about documentation. ”