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Qualitative
Inquiry
http://qix.sagepub.com/
Constructing Female Genealogy: Autobiographical Female Representations as Means for Identity Work
Maarit Mäkelä
Qualitative Inquiry 2003 9: 535
DOI: 10.1177/1077800403254221
The online version of this article can be found at:
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10.1177/1077800403254221
QUALITATIVE
Mäkelä
/ CONSTRUCTING
INQUIRY / August
FEMALE
2003
GENEALOGY
ARTICLE
Constructing Female Genealogy:
Autobiographical Female
Representations as Means
for Identity Work
Maarit Mäkelä
University of Art and Design Helsinki
In this article, I am uncovering my journey as an artist. This journey opens up to an
ambiguous autobiographical space produced by narrative means. The space can be conceived both as mental and spatial. The mental space is an autobiographical state where
identity is constructed through the stories we tell ourselves about our lives; the spatial
space is a concrete exhibition that is produced out of the mental one. During the journey I
ask: How were the exhibition Mirrorplay and the creation process related to it produced? What were the means I used to create this space, and what did it mean to me to
work in this autobiographically flavored space? While pondering these questions I am
aware that the description of my artistic process can also encourage viewers to step into
the (mental) autobiographical space of their own.
Keywords: art; ceramics; female; genealogy; autobiography
We all return to memories and dreams like this, again and again; the story
we tell of our own life is reshaped around them. But the point doesn’t lie
there, back in the past, back in the lost time when they happened; the only
point lies in interpretation.
—Carolyn Steedman (1986, p. 5)
Art historian Rosemary Betterton wrote about women’s desire for a historical ontology of themselves that rises above the borders between autobiography and history and seeks to constitute women as concrete historical subjects—the subjects of their own lives. Betterton (1996) made the thought more
concrete by saying that history represents the present as well as the past:
When reworking what has happened in the past, we also give it a current
meaning.
Qualitative Inquiry, Volume 9 Number 4, 2003 535-553
DOI: 10.1177/1077800403254221
© 2003 Sage Publications
535
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The autobiographical, according to Betterton (1996), has become an
important means for women to explore their social and psychic identity. It has
been used to examine how gender, family, social class, race, and history are
mapped out within individual narratives, the stories we tell about (our) lives
lived. Betterton described the feminist writing process as “unfinished business,” where movements between present and past, self and the Other, form
our identity. She referred to the feminist practices in writing, arts, and film
making that were started in the 1970s and 1980s, aiming to outline a subject in
process: projects combining the means of fiction, autobiography, and history,
(often) aiming to study a daughter’s psychic and social relationship to her
mother.1
In Finland too, the 1980s brought a new perspective on women and
women’s experience. The change has been seen, for example, in the way that
women have sought answers in smaller rather than in larger entities—in the
everyday and in their own immediate circle (Lintonen, 2000). On the other
hand, the authors of these projects reaching into research and art have been
very aware that the private is public: that the personal and the political, trivial, and significant, everyday and culturally important events link together
seamlessly.
The dialogue between this collective and private personal history was also
referred to by Walter Benjamin (1986). He wrote of his experience, which is
not made up so much of private facts firmly fixed in the memory as of accumulating, often unconscious facts that flow together in the memory. By the
unconscious part of memory material he means the material that cannot be
returned to the memory by intellectual effort. Voluntary and involuntary
memory material blends together especially on festive and ceremonial occasions. These are also occasions when the individual contents of the past come
together with the collective past (Benjamin, 1986).
Eeva Jokinen (1996) suggested that these voluntary and involuntary
encounters with memory also take place in the writing process in which the
writer works with autobiographical material. It is a creative process based on
the effort to maximize awareness of one’s own understanding. The observation applies equally well to artistic processes where autobiographical material is used. Another example of such a project is my own project, situated in
the field of visual art, with the product of the process being a series of exhibitions. In the following, I shall create a more detailed picture of my own autobiographical space, out of which I have produced my exhibition Mirrorplay.
LOCATING AUTOFICTIVE SPACE
In discussions on memory, emphasis has been placed on the self-evident
truth that all representation and communication are based on memory. Every
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creative act, whether it is expressed in writing, visual art, music, or any other
form of expression, has to do with memories (Peltonen & Eskola, 1997). Not
only do memories influence what we express, but our expression always
involves fictive features. Autobiographical writing is always, at least partly,
fiction. Fictive material is thus in a way imagined and based on creative thinking. The crucial point is, however, that the meanings we give to what has happened change.
Because reality cannot directly be described or everything told, we have to
choose events, create figures and stages for life (Makkonen, 1996). Päivi
Kosonen (2000) referred to the discontinuity of experience and narrative, to
Serge Doubrovsky’s idea of an autobiography enriched by psychoanalytical
understanding, which he called autofiction. In this, fact and fiction converge in
the form of narrative, the aim of which is to come closer to the narrator’s inner
truth.
The idea of autofiction connects back to the exhibition Mirrorplay in two
ways. First, it defines the concrete spatial exhibition space that I built up during the artistic work process. The exhibition can thus be seen as an autofictive
entity that contains elements based on both experience and creative thinking.
At the same time, as the idea of autofictive space defines the concrete exhibition space, it also describes the state of mind in which I work as an artist. Concretely, this means that as an artist I have taken the liberty to fill in some of the
gaps in my visual narrative with fictive pieces. Even though some of the parts
are only loosely tied to my personal history, their part in building up the story
in no way makes it more difficult to grasp the basic plot—on the contrary, to
some extent they support the emergence of an autobiographical truth.
According to Maaria Linko (1998), art can be seen as a form of human
activity that makes it possible to construct a personal identity and look for a
place in a changing world. Karen Scott-Hoy (in press) similarly displayed a
belief in the power of art when she sought to organize and link experiences as
a part of her personal narrative. During this writing process, I as an artistresearcher create a retrospective backward-looking glance at my exhibition
Mirrorplay. I want as a researcher to find out what it was I have done as an artist. Which of the autobiographical elements I had incorporated in the exhibition were related to my own life story? How do these elements unwind and
(re)build the story that I am telling about my own life? At the same time, I
“update” the story that I am able to tell (myself) about my own life.
The exhibition was shown in Helsinki in Gallery Laterna Magica in the
year 2000. It was based on old family photographs. The visual and partly also
voiced story that emerged out of these pictorial documents was guided by
stories passed down in the family, memories, letters, and excerpts from old
diaries. Most of the documentary material that I went through in the working
process was unfamiliar to me.
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FORGOTTEN FEMALE GENERATIONS
Patricia Holland (1991), who has been interested in the meanings of
domestic photography, thinks that family photos are also thoroughly public.
The meanings of family photographs are social as well as personal, and the
social influences the personal. In family albums the recorded personal histories also belong to narratives on a wider scale—those public narratives of
community, religion, ethnicity, and nation that make private identity
possible.
As an artist I was intuitively aware that by using my own family photos, I
was working in a borderland: in an area where personal memories are
entwined as a part of social history and the personal unconscious as a part of
public myth. I found it extremely interesting to work with autobiographical
visual material. The photos tell a lot about events and persons linked to my
personal narration. As Barbro Werkmäster (1993) reminded us, photography
and other technology-dependent media (e.g., film and TV) are so far the best
art forms to represent time.
When working with this autobiographical material, I experimented with
the photos very intuitively. I did not have in my head any particular structure
or plan for my work. But when I hung these pieces together in the Laterna
Magica gallery space, I found that with the help of my autobiographical photographs, I was actually constructing my female genealogy. As the basis of my
ceramic works, I had chosen photos from my female family tree in five generations. The photographs represented me, my mother, my maternal grandmother, great-grandmother, and great-great-grandmother. Werkmäster
(1993) reminded us that even though the main motive of family albums is to
represent family life, women seem to take fewer pictures than men. At the
same time, they are, with the children, overrepresented as models. This tendency seems to be valid also as regards my own family pictures; most of the
pictures represent my female relatives or their offspring.
In the field of feminine studies, especially among researchers involved in
social studies, recalling and going through things that have already happened is considered to be a source for change and a kind of (mental) growth.
Memories come to mind over and over again. They fill and search for new
forms depending on the perspective and position from which we are looking
at our life. During the evaluation process, which continues throughout life, a
person molds her image of self by organizing and analyzing the events of her
life again and again. This process, which enables us to interpret autobiographical events over and over, is also considered to be a kind of (auto)healing process. Anthony Giddens (1991) talked about the autobiography as a
rehabilitative intervention in the past.
Since the 1990s, interest has been focused on the discontinuity of memory—things and events that have been forgotten. The idea is to make wellremembered material marginal and concentrate on material we cannot
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remember (Jokinen, 1989). When I started to work on the forthcoming exhibition, I, similar to other feminine researchers, was also particularly interested
in the themes (and pictures) I had ignored in my previous exhibitions (which
have also dealt with my previous feminine generations). Why had I almost
completely omitted the two oldest generations of my female family tree, even
if I had available some pictures of these women? Another question concerned
my mother and me. According to previous exhibitions, it seems clear the
dialogic connection with my mother seemed to be impossible. When starting
to work with the Mirrorplay exhibition, I was asking myself: Why is it so hard
to see both of us as equal actors in our narrative(s)?
GALLERY UNDER THE EARTH
The gallery space I had chosen to exhibit my works in was located in the
basement of an old building. For me this concrete dark space, which is situated under the earth, is also a metaphor for the psychically unconscious condition. It is at the same time a physical and a mental space where not only conscious but also subconscious themes are raised. By hanging and lighting my
works in this gallery space, I also lift the themes represented by the works
from the subconscious to the conscious—to be encountered and dealt with.
Kirsi Saarikangas (1999) wrote that the use of the space not only produces
but also interprets meanings. The use of space formulates different, even contradictory meanings. A certain space does not look the same to everybody.
Moreover, the meanings of the space depend on whom it is observed by. The
meanings vary even to the same viewer depending on the viewer’s stage and
position in life.
The meanings of a space are formulated not only consciously but also
unconsciously and imperceptibly when the space is used (Saarikangas, 1999).
The meanings take shape through movements, sense perceptions, touches,
smells, and voices. The architectonic space is lived in scents, voices, touches,
bodily movements in the space, by contacts, and impacts, and the touch of the
voice. These material meanings, which give shape to a kind of “routemap of
the body,” we carry along with us as a memory from our different spatial
experiments (Saarikangas, 1999, p. 282).2
Elisabeth Grosz (1995) discussed the link between space and feminist theory. According to Grosz, it is clear that the use of space has political, social,
and cultural influences. I am aware that all these—political, social, and cultural—factors correspondingly have an effect on how I as a female artist
occupy the empty exhibition space: what kind of wholeness I build up in a
space I have rented and therefore have the power to modify in the way I want.
The exhibition Mirrorplay was constructed of three different gallery rooms,
all of which had a different character of their own (see the floor plan of the gallery, Figure 1). For me it also meant three different kinds of installation for the
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Figure 1: Floor Plan of Gallery Laterna Magica
chosen theme—the story of culturally forgotten (or marginalized) female
genealogy. Next I will take a closer look at two of these rooms. One of the
rooms exposes the path to the narration of my female family tree mainly
through voice, another room through the integrated visual whole.
MEMORIES TOLD—A TALE TOLD BY MEMORIES
In her writings, Luce Irigaray (1987/1993) stressed the meaning of female
genealogy:
Each of us has a female family tree: we have a mother, a maternal grandmother
and great-grandmothers, we have daughters. Because we have been exiled into
the house of our husbands, it is easy to forget the special quality of the female
genealogy; we might even come to deny it. (p. 19)
According to Irigaray (1987/1993), the possibility of constructing a female
genealogy is included in the mutual relationship between mothers and
daughters. In a situation such as this, a mother is understood as a culturally
and symbolically transmitted figure through whom the daughter can be
coded in as a part of a signification system created by women (Parvikko,
1993). Irigaray asked us to become aware of this maternal link:
Let us try to situate ourselves within that female genealogy so that we can win
and hold on to our identity. Let us not forget, moreover, that we already have a
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history, that certain women, despite all the cultural obstacles, have made their
mark upon history and all too often have been forgotten by us. (p. 19)
The basic idea of my voice work is linked to these thoughts of Irigaray
(1987/1993). With the help of the interviews, I wanted to define the personal
history of my female family representatives—the women who have been significant for my own life but who have remained unfamiliar to me. Similar to
Irigaray, I considered these women as mothers, through whom the main—
culturally and socially shaped—line of my life has been transmitted through
history.
My Maternal Family Line Drawn by Voice
The smallest of the gallery rooms I devoted to voice(s). On the tape, which
was played repeatedly in this minimalistic space, I interview my mother, her
sister, and two brothers of their female family representatives. The leading
motive of the interviews was to collect information from the oldest representatives of my family tree about their foremothers. I had thematized the interviews in such a way that we dealt with three previous generations of women
in them. The questions progressed chronologically discussing with each of
the interviewees my great-great-grandmother on the maternal side, Lovisa
Saarinen (1837-1914), then my great-grandmother, Olga Laitinen (1877-1939),
and finally my maternal grandmother, Airi Kuussaari (1907-1983).
As I had already guessed on the assumption of some kind of memory
block, the generation previous to mine had no memories at all about their
mother’s maternal grandmother, Lovisa Saarinen. Nevertheless, some pictorial and written documents of her remained. On the basis of the interviews,
there are also very few memories of Lovisa’s daughter, my mother’s grandmother, Olga Saarinen. My mother recounted in the interview that she had
been 2 years old when her grandmother died. She was thus the only one of the
siblings who could even potentially have remembered something about her
maternal grandmother. It seems that even this small crossing of life threads
resulted in my mother being the only one who was told any anecdotes about
Olga afterward.
I heard from my aunt, who lived in the same household with her in Mikkeli in
the goldsmith’s house. . . . She told me that Olga Laitinen was very badtempered and mean later in life, because she had been paralyzed, quite young
when I think about it now. Probably around 50. . . . She lived a long time after that
paralyzed and not able to get about and so she was a bad-tempered old lady.
My mother was also the only one whom her own mother, Airi, had told
about any memories of Olga. In fact, it is pointless to talk about memories
because my maternal grandmother only told her daughter one story about
her own mother—which she does, however, remember hearing several times.
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Both my mother and my uncle told me that when Olga Laitinen had her eldest
daughter—my grandmother that is—it was on March 15, 1907, or on the very
day that Finnish women got the vote and Olga Laitinen had been furious that
she had had to have the baby on that particular day.
Besides my mother, none of the siblings remember a single family story
passed down about Olga. With the exception of my mother, they do not seem
to have heard anything about Olga from their own mother. This partly conflicts with the idea that it is the female representatives of the family who have
kept up the stories about people in the family and preserved them. According
to Tutta Palin (1997), it was the mothers, grandmothers, and aunts who traditionally served as the collective memory and conscience of the family.
From the interviews with other siblings, it appears that my mother’s
mother enjoyed retelling the life stories of people related to the family and
thus actively kept family stories alive. It seems, however, that all the stories
she told were about male members of the family—mainly about events in the
lives of her father and her four younger brothers. This is supported not only
by my own memories but also by documents found in her estate—the pages
of her childhood diary3 and letters from her husband at the front.4
Filling in the Gaps
After editing the individual interviews as a chronologically progressing
tape and having presented the tape in my exhibition, I met with the interviewees once again. In addition to the interviewees, I had invited my mother’s and
her siblings’ second cousin in the get-together. It turned out that the second
cousin was a living example of the kind of a female relative described by Palin
(1997) earlier, who preserves and carries on the stories, anecdotes, and myths
of the family. She acted as a kind of simultaneous commentator, filling the
gaps or interfaces of the reminiscence material collected on the tapes.
We listened to the tape once again, stopping at points that aroused discussion or the need for comment by any members of the group. All of the brothers and sisters were surprised at how little they knew about their maternal
grandmother, Olga. Thinking about the reasons for this empty page in the history of their lives, the second cousin began to tell stories that she remembered
about Olga. These were clearly stories that had been suppressed through generations and left as a gap in the history of my branch of the family. In the parallel branch, however, they still played a central role in their tradition. Many of
these stories related to my maternal great-great-grandmother, Lovisa, but
especially to her daughter, Olga. According to one story, Olga never accepted
her daughter’s marriage. It is evident that this disagreement between mother
and daughter led in the end to Olga’s almost complete disappearance from
the history of my family.
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Katarina Eskola (1997) reflected on how the stories in a family—sometimes retold, sometimes kept silent—influence the thoughts and actions of
the members of the family. According to Eskola, family myths and legends are
in fact stories charged with a certain value content that are repeated from generation to generation. They also act as a contact surface against which the
members of the family can measure their own decisions and solutions. At the
same time, they leave their mark on the way family members react and interpret events. Also, even stories that have been hushed up and remained untold
are present and exert a hidden influence. The family ethics are preserved and
passed on in and through these stories (Eskola, 1997; see also Byng-Hall &
Thompson, 1990).
The fact that the family legends about Olga have been suppressed in my
branch of the family does not mean, though, that she has been forgotten altogether. She has been linked with the family as a historical person, about
whom there is a certain amount of knowledge and photographs. The untold
stories (about Olga) are also reflected in the relations of later generations of
women in our family to the extent that there have been no intimate outpourings or extravagant empathy in the relations between mothers and daughters
later on either. This does not mean that the relations were not quite normal
and correct. I believe that by dropping Olga from our family story, my maternal grandmother, Airi, and with her my maternal grandfather, Erkki, rather
consciously wanted to avoid painting too gloomy a portrait of her for future
generations.
After we had listened to the tapes together, the second cousin checked
some of the details of the family stories with her 83-year-old sister. The sister
remembers Olga as the most energetic, independent, and domineering of the
family’s five children—but not as ill willed. Olga brought her children up
strictly. She also seems to have been especially critical of their spouses. This
also applied to Airi’s husband, my maternal grandfather, Erkki Kuussaari.
According to the family legend, Erkki’s popularity with his future mother-inlaw was not enhanced by the fact that while studying the whole family knew
the couple was “secretly” living together.
It appears that the time when my maternal grandmother studied in Helsinki was very significant for her future life in many ways. As well as finding
her future spouse during her studying years, she also made many important
personal contacts and received influences that were to direct the course of her
life in the future. The closest of these friends was her roommate, who graduated as a textile artist from the Ateneum. It emerges from the interviews that it
was through her that my grandmother made friends with other artists and
also learned to appreciate their work throughout her life. Would it be too daring to suppose that in that artists’ community, living together out of wedlock
was not so divergent from the social behavior of the group?
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REBUILDING A VISUAL STORY
While the tape I have described earlier was playing in the smallest room,
the largest room became a kind of small cinema. The work, which could be
called a spatial installation, incorporates the central elements of the whole
exhibition: ceramics, picture, and light. The dialogic space created when these
elements meet in the dark gallery room can be interpreted by several different
routes. As Saarikangas (1999) commented, a work of art is not and cannot be
interpreted as an independent, separate, and unchanging physical art object
but as a work containing and producing many—even conflicting—cultural
meanings. The creation of meanings does not cease with the completion of the
work but is rather continuous. Thus, meanings also become layered and
change with time.
These chronologically layered meanings relating to the work are also inaccessible to the intentions of the artist. On the other hand, the artist’s intentions
have no direct influence on the content and message that the viewer gives to
the work. Although the artist chooses the subject of the work and has his or
her own interpretation of the work, Eva Londos (1997), for example, considered it the exception rather than the rule that the viewers of the work should
also understand the intention of the artist. The viewer creates his or her own
interpretation by his or her own meanings and personal story through the
work.
It is also clear that the artist’s interpretation of his or her own work lives
and changes with time. Some artists do not want to interpret their work at all,
at least not in public. Among ceramic artists, for example, this view has been
strongly represented. Ceramic artists are used to expressing themselves
through their work and not—at least up until now hardly at all—through
words (e.g., De Waal, 2000). A typical feature of Finnish ceramic art in particular has been unwillingness to talk about the work (Leppänen, 1998). Some artists on the other hand have felt a need to give more extensive thought to the
basic starting points of their work. I belong to that group. As an artist, I am
interested in how my works link up with my personal life and on the other
hand how they relate to the culture in which I live. In the following I shall
examine my work of spatial art, built up of a video recording and a ceramic
screen, through the agency of certain means of expression that are central to
my work. These are related to the pictorial elements, material concepts, and
structural composition.
Between Autobiographical Truth and Visual Form
In the center of the biggest room there are two pillars reaching from the
earth floor to the roof. Between these two pillars, I placed a ceramic screen (see
Figure 2). The screen is made from almost paper-thin translucent porcelain.
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Figure 2: Installation Female Genealogy in Gallery Laterna Magica
The work also comprises a video film. The idea is that the picture projected by
the video on the screen is filtered before the viewer’s eyes through the ceramic
screen. Thus, the video equipment and projector could be placed behind the
screen. Because there was no other source of light in the room but the video
projector, it was not very easy to see the equipment in the darkness. In front of
the screen, at the entrance to the room, I placed two benches on either side of
the entrance to make viewing easier.
There was nothing else in the space besides these elements. The minimalist
nature of the space was partly due to the fact that the entire central theme of
the Mirrorplay exhibition series was crystallized in the work displayed in this
room. In addition, it contained solutions that I had never seen before in terms
of both the ceramic material and the artistic expression but that I had found
myself coming closer to as an artist during the 5-year process of creation. I
thus believed in the idea and that this only 1m × 1m work would be able to fill
the whole 49m2 exhibition space with its intensity.
This work can be interpreted as the conclusion of the whole exhibition.
Reflecting the whole related work process, the translucence of the screen may
be seen as a metaphor for a kind of mental illumination. I have gone through
the process and also accepted what I saw, found, and experienced. At the
same time, the work is an autonomous whole. It illuminates itself and does
not require any light coming from outside the work in order for it to be seen.
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The autobiographical story we tell (ourselves) consists of a number of
memories and remembered images. These are also the substance from which
we build up our story. The idea that the story is built up of separate factors is
also repeated on the ceramic screen. The screen is built up in the space from a
number of small pieces of porcelain. They are hung in such a way that seen
from a certain perspective they form a consistent and intact whole—in this
case a screen.
Each of the 35 pieces forming the screen is separately attached to the roof
structure. As you approach the work, the slight current of air causes the pieces
to move. As with memories—and especially the interpretations we give to
them—the pieces are also in random, subtle motion. In this motion caused by
the viewer, the parts of the work overlap each other randomly. Especially in
places where the pieces partly cover each other, the projected video image
remains unclear. In other places, the image does not reach the screen at all.
The incomplete, blurred image only partly projected on the screen links up
with the idea of the discontinuity of the narration. This way of expressing
things—partly employing unconnected memories and anecdotes, avoiding
ultimate meanings, and the final seal of truth—is connected with a tradition
that modern autobiographers have also used in their literary works. The textual form goes back to the metaphorical observation made by Stendhal as far
back as 1835. The structure of frescoes that emerge from oblivion, including
both preserved paintings and places where the painting has come off with the
plaster and disappeared forever, corresponds in Stendhal’s view to his own
digressive way of writing (Stendhal, 1890/1953).
Päivi Kosonen (2000) wrote about late modern memoir writers who,
appealing to Stendhal’s tradition, want to leave ruins as ruins, frescoes
unrepaired, and the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle unassembled. About the late
modern way of writing, she said “that it is not tied to the structure or order of
the story, but seeks to find a different, more open form in the fragments” (p.
73). In this form, memories and anecdotes are left as unconnected elements,
and no effort is even made to tie them together into an intact story. When
memory gaps and lacking life stories are accepted as given, autobiographical
storytelling automatically becomes partial.
As an artist I, similar to Stendhal, am interested in the original story that
the frescoes once reproduced. Following the late modern author’s point of
view, I see the unfolding of the story as a never-ending and unfinished process that provides the possibility for new and different interpretations. On the
other hand, similar to the modern autobiographers, I think of my visual and
textual project as an autobiographical space that tempts me to look for the
missing pieces and use them to fill in the blanks in the incomplete tale. At the
same time, I am very conscious of the impossibility of my work: It is (no longer) possible to achieve a final, real history (Holland, 1991).
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Mixing Autobiographical and Fictive Material
The autobiographical pictorial material of the video film is derived from
two sources. The still figures of the film are from my family’s photograph
album, whereas the video cuts are short fictive episodes that have been made
on the basis of the photos. The structure of the film is based on 12 old family
photographs that show the women of my family in three generations. In addition to my great-great-grandmother, Olga, the pictures show my maternal
grandmother, Airi, and my mother, Auli (see Figure 3). These original photographs appear on the film in chronological order.
Connected with six of these stills there are parallel pictures that broaden
out into short episodes filmed on video. These old still photos change into
silent, black-and-white video cuts in such a way that the change is slow and as
imperceptible as possible. At the same time, the people shown in the old family pictures are replaced by later female representatives of the same genealogical line. On the video, my mother represents (or actually “acts”) her maternal
grandmother, Olga, and her mother, Airi. I represent both my maternal
grandmother, Airi, and my mother, Auli. My brother’s daughters, Venni,
Salla, and Laura, also represent their grandmother, Auli, and her mother, Airi.
When the still figures shown in the photographs have been replaced by
current female representatives of the genealogical line, some slight but clearly
perceptible movement takes place in the videos: A partially paralyzed
woman lifts her cane in the air to shoo away the flies; a girl turns towards the
piano and begins to play; a woman takes off her sunglasses and smiles (see
Figure 4).
The video cuts made during summer 2000 have been taken so that their
composition corresponds in its main outlines to how the female representatives of my family were shown in old photographs. Thus, both the environment, the positioning of the people in the picture, their clothing, and hairstyles are chosen to correspond as closely as possible to the structure of the
original photograph. However, I have not aimed at complete correspondence
between the objects of the photographs. It is more a matter of correspondence
of the basic lines that are central to the pictorial structure. From the point of
view of the narrative it is essential that the viewer is able to notice how the
decades change in the picture. In one cut, for example, a 1960s car is replaced
by a 40-year younger version, and an old men’s bicycle is glimpsed in the
video recording as a modern mountain bike.
On the film, the historical autobiographical documents blend with fictive
autobiographical material from the present. At the same time, the chronology
of events is broken down so that past and present merge. The film breaks the
linear progression of time, proposing a new perspective on the life lived and
our interpretation of it.
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QUALITATIVE INQUIRY / August 2003
Figure 3: Airi and Auli Kuussaari (Picture Taken 1939)
At the same time, as the family photos forming the narrative framework of
the film show the previous generations of my female family tree, I also place
myself on this female genealogical continuum through these pictures. As I
examine the pictures and the memories relating to them in the light of the way
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Figure 4: Cuts From Video Female Genealogy (Maarit Mäkelä and Laura
Valle, Video Taken 2000)
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and conditions under which the women of my family have written the scripts
of their lives, I also localize my own social and cultural frame of reference.
Saarikangas (1999) felt that showing and depicting gender may be particularly helpful in maintaining and strengthening cultural structures and conceptions of gender and the place of men and women within these structures.
At least with this reading, I am confronted with a number of foremothers who
have very strongly been the subjects of their own lives—both in (my) pictorial
and in the verbal story.
A STORY PROGRESSING THROUGH
PICTURES AND WORDS
As an artist, I have told the visual story of my life on the basis of (pictorial)
material and its interpretation. This story has been crystallized into a narrative exhibition.5 By drawing a parallel between this visual story and the conventions of autobiographical narration, I have at the same time expressed my
wish to contribute to the process of outlining the autobiographical truth. But,
every time we tell our story we tell it from the perspective of a particular
moment in time. Thus, at the same time as this story in narrative form develops and is told, it also in a way unwinds from the other end.
This story and the life of the interpretations relating to it—their changing,
crystallization, and dispersion—are also typical of the process by which I am
now trying to reach the textual form of my visual tale. It is evident that these
differently shaped stories are partly irreconcilable. The pictures tell an open
story that every viewer interprets from his or her own perspective. There are
also gaps in the story. Some of the visual elements it shows have several different interpretations. Because the picture is both without language and more
than language, words can never be bent to the shape of pictures, and they can
only partly represent what is seen. Thus, the relationship between picture and
word is in a sense unfinished and endless—not so much because of the limited nature of language but because language and picture have no common
denominator (Saarikangas, 1991).
In this case, the text also partly closes the pictures. It nails meanings into
place and thus builds its own story. On the other hand, it also penetrates into
the gaps left by the pictorial story, begins to weave a net to cover the cracks. In
this way, it paints over the gaps in the fresco. But, the picture that it creates at
the gaps is not necessarily the same picture that was originally there. So, this
textual form of the story in fact creates another story: a written story that is
partly the same as the visual story but for most of the journey only goes hand
in hand with it.
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NOTES
1. As an example of such writing, she mentions Carolyn Steedman’s (1986) Landscape for a Good Woman. Another kind of example is Maria McMahon’s film Nursing History with her article “Nursing Histories: Reviving Life in Abandoned Selves” (1991). In
the article she explained the autobiographical background of her film.
2. The idea of a “routemap of the body” is from Julia Kristeva (1980/1986).
3. It is obvious that at least at some stage in her childhood my grandmother wrote a
diary. Most of the writings have been destroyed (probably by her). The only pages left
were written on July 21, 1921, the very day her younger brother, Lauri, was drowned.
4. In the letter, dated July 16, 1944, my grandfather reports to my grandmother
under what circumstances her brother, Pentti, had disappeared at the front.
5. Although I talk about a visual story, I mean the autobiographical entity built up in
the Laterna Magica exhibition space, which also includes the auditory part.
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Maarit Mäkelä works as a researcher in the Department of Ceramics and
Glass Design at the University of Art and Design Helsinki, Finland. She is
currently finishing her art-oriented doctoral thesis that is based on her subjective artistic creation process. She also works as an artist in the field of contemporary visual art.
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