Image: Marika Halonen – Wachtraum, 2021

Marika Halonen: Ou Topos #2 

When photographing smoke bombs, I create an illusion that I record with the camera. My
photographs are alienated from reality, mystical, dreamlike visions. Especially in my latest
pictures, melancholy is present. There are no people in the photos. Determining the time
can be difficult. I have named my latest pictures with the terms of the utopian philosopher
Ernst Bloch, such as: ”Wachtraum” (daydream) and ”Dämmerung” (dawn). For Bloch,
utopian art meant a new category, images emerging from the subconscious that still
contain unconscious, which can be difficult to reach with words.

I have been using smoke bombs in my photo works since 2014. At first I photographed
them in forests, cliffs and beaches, then wasteland areas and the ruins of abandoned
buildings found their way into the stages of my smoke performances. They seemed to
belong together and still still feel that way. In my photos, ugly and broken reality meets the
cloud castles I build. In the pictures, you can see scrap and garbage, and above
everything floats a wonderful colored smoke, which is like a moving thought that cannot be
predicted.

Marika Halonen is a visual artist from Helsinki who graduated from the Turku Academy of
Arts. Intuition play a big role in Halonen’s work. The process also essentially includes
adventure: searching and finding. It is constant experimentation, improvisation, being at
the mercy of the weather, tolerating uncertainty.