Sterile Structures

Solo Exhibition
Photographic Gallery Hippolyte, Helsinki
31.10–23.11.2025
>>

Exhibition text
Two women are searching for some relief in their lives. They wander through idyllic rural landscapes, spending time in conversation, yet nothing seems to endure. The brown leather sofa feels oppressive. The mind, however, adjusts with surprising ease to ever-changing circumstances.

In the film, the women talk about men – what else would they talk about? – especially one: Janne. Oh, Janne… I love my man, even though I wish I didn’t. There’s another man in the film too, a hot one, swept away by his hunger for the road. The women’s relationship to men is ambiguous, yet hopeful. The film’s characters exist in the present moment and, at the same time, within fragmentary memories whose authenticity is assessed by an external, technologically aided agency.

The sense of security – and its absence – punctuates life. From inner experiences to close relationships and public spaces: can these ever truly be separated? Signs and hints of conflict are etched into the structures of everyday life: torn-off stickers, scratches on railings, and clothes abandoned on the street.

The exhibition at Photographic Gallery Hippolyte is Jade Kallio’s exploration of a dissociative reality, where biopower and norms shape the boundaries of body and gender, as well as social multidimensionality, euphoria, and joy beyond these institutionalised limits. The exhibition features a fictional video work and spatial elements: supporting structures, clothing, and traces of resistance. Kallio seeks to challenge established social norms and conventions, particularly the ways in which the bodies of gender-minority individuals are interpreted and regulated in a surveilled society.

In Sterile Structures, the conditions in which the work takes place are not just the backdrop to the process, but part of the story itself. The exhibition asks from whose perspective the story is told, and by what means emotions and experiences become part of a shared reality.

Their work and the exhibition have been supported by AVEK, the Saastamoinen Foundation, and the Kone Foundation.

Photo: Milla Talassalo and Jade Kallio

←