ART CENTER AHJO, HEHKU-SPACE: ANNELI TIMONEN AND SUSU REITTU

ANNELI TIMONEN JA SUSU REITTU - Baba, muamo dai tyttöñi - Olin kerran olevassa, tuleva jo minussa 22.10.-9.11.2025

“Daughters are born in the wombs of mothers – and within them already lie the seeds of future daughters. The chain of generations is unbroken: grandmother, mother and daughter all at once.”

The fact is that all of a human woman’s millions of eggs are permanently formed during the fetal period, in the mother’s womb. Therefore, the thought game that a granddaughter has already existed at the cellular level inside her grandmother is fascinating and comforting.

It made visual artists Anneli Timonen and her daughter Susu Reitu reflect on how creativity and making with hands pass from one woman to another in their family, intertwining like a crocheted chain:

Great-grandmother Paraskeva (1852–1942) was a famous master of lamentations, and she had learned a large part of those hymns from her own mother. Hardworking and independent Baba Ksenia (1888–1978) supported herself as a seamstress before getting married at the age of 35. Aino Sinikka (1931–2023), a beloved mother and grandmother, was a skilled poet who immortalized the world in oil paints and pagizi in Karelian.
Mother and grandmother of three girls Anneli (b.1959) is a community and visual artist from Kittila. The themes of Anneli's diverse career have included biodiversity, human and animal rights, and the relationship between nature and humans.
Daughter and mother Suvi-Tuuli ‘Susu’ (b.1984), who lives in Joensuu, is an entrepreneur in the creative industry who writes, illustrates, makes music and performs, and does a variety of visual arts while studying carpentry.

The youngest woman in the family is Reitu's eldest daughter, ‘tyttöñi’ Vanni Wellamo (b.2022). The gift of creativity inherited from her ancestors was already evident at the age of ten months, when the little girl played the guitar like a log and sang ‘TäTäTäTä’.

In this joint exhibition between mother and daughter, Timonen and Reittu explore the unbroken connection, fates and choices of the women in their family, both deceased and still living. Through various artistic techniques and styles, they also strive to preserve Karelian culture and the Muamo language, the emotional Karelian language.

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