| 17.10.2002, Helsingin Sanomat, Arja Maunuksela A different, fable-like feminine beauty An advertisement on the tram took my attention: “Gala Dress”, Tomi Paasonen and Tuuli Helkky Helle’s photo exhibition, and a reference to some Fable-project. In the pictures was something arresting, but was it due to the strangeness of the form of the body, or in the angle that gave it the illusion of a body floating in space? The answer is both, as the exhibition reveals. The photographs are of a disabled woman, bare, without clothes or wheelchair, in different environments, from a forest to black emptiness. Helle started planning a nude photo series of a disabled woman after seeing actress Soli Labbart photo series of her ageing body. At first she looked for a young beautiful disabled woman, but changed her mind to self-portraits: an ageing disabled woman. As her photographer she found Tomi Paasonen, whom she got to know through performing in his dance piece. The Fable-project is about supporting minority artists, but the name also gives the exhibition a suitable mythical mind-frame. The exhibition is no medical investigation, but a fairy-tale-like photo series of a physically different little woman, who is like a mysterious scientist or fairy queen, a figure whose divergence is not inferior, but a different kind of power. Sure other artists have tackled the issue of disability, yet never the less a disabled body is more of a taboo than nudity or gender, which are frequently recycled in the contemporary arts per se. Helle’s and Paasonen’s discourse of the topic is original, in its intimacy substantially weighty, and visually stunning. Also Paasonen knows the issue personally. His promising career as a dancer was interrupted due to an accident. |
| 14.10.2002, Culture magazine “Gala Dress” is art without borders The artists Tomi Paasonen and Tuuli Helkky Helle wanted to show the disabled and ageing body to counter-balance the fashionable ideal of beauty with its artificially trimmed physique. As a result we have a touching and enchanting photo exhibition, “Gala Dress”. Their work together began with the award winning Olotila (State of Being) dance piece, which evoked thoughts and emotions and was chosen as Theatre Event of 2000. Helle, a dancer in the piece tells: “This particular dance piece was significant for me. The choreographer Paasonen dismantled me from the wheel chair, thus putting me in a somewhat odd, but challenging state of being, which evoked at times even intense dialogue between the mind and the body. This process sparked realisations, which we used as motives for the photographs. The former star dancer Paasonen, handles physicality sensitively and compassionately, our physical contour is for him a natural part of our identity. He is interested in dealing with physicality, its limits and possibilities. The physically exact executions, and aesthetically perfect bodies are put aside. With his works he attempts to break traditional borders and expand people’s views. “Disabled artists are fertile ground for artistic exploration. They exist in the margin of society, thus beholding a powerful need to express, Paasonen says. “Gala Dress” photo exhibition is the opening event of The Fable-project, which aims to bring out minority artists, through different media and educational programs. The three-year project is realised by the Lasipalatsi Media Centre, Theatre Information Centre and Försti-Film. |
| 5.10.2002, Helsinki Regional News, by Satu Salminen Rough art on ageing Photography fuses separate worlds. Tomi Paasonen dresses life into art, both in the form of dance, theatre and visual art. The multitalented artist says that art always was part of his life. Tomi Paasonen is a citizen of the world. I was born in Helsinki in 1970. Since then he has lived in Hamburg, San Francisco, Chicago. At the moment he doesn’t live anywhere, he says. “I travel constantly between Berlin and Helsinki. I’m ready to go where ever interesting projects are taking place”, he says, adding that it is difficult to compare Helsinki with Berlin. “Berlin is a difficult city, but I like it there.” He started his career as a dancer. After that his CV has filled up with everything from his own choreography, dance-theatre pieces to photo exhibitions. The man’s newest project is part of a three year Fable-project, which aims to promote art by minority artists. Power, courage and will His first photo exhibition in Finland shows the alterations of an ageing disabled woman. He describes some of the pictures as being coarse. “It might not be easy to watch a body of a disabled woman.” The pictures argue against today’s teenage model physique. The collaboration with the severely disabled Tuuli Helkky Helle, who is also the mother of the idea, has been a fantastic experience. “Tuuli’s power, courage and will to express her self are tremendous”, Paasonen says. “She is an adventurer and up for it all, so it’s a joy to work together. The 70-year-old Helle suggested the collaboration in 2001, after she had been part of the Olotila dance piece, which combined disabled and professional dancers. Pictures have been taken out in nature: in water, on the ice, in the forest and as a contrast also in a bunker and in the studio. A lens to the message According to Paasonen, Tuuli’s whole expressive range is reflected in the images, and one sees that the model has enjoyed the process. I am a mediator and a lens to Tuuli’s message and I combine different worlds. More specific he doesn’t want to get. “I don’t want to put words into the pictures, but to evoke them. The spectator will give them their own meaning.” During his entire career Tomi Paasonen has worked with professionals as well as amateurs. “With non-professionals reality is always present and brings in a layer of documentary”, he explains. “Professionals often become blind to other worlds. They only see their own accomplishments.” |
| Nyt magazine 11.10.2002 “Gala Dress” The beautiful body It all began when the disabled artist Tuuli Helkky Helle watched TV: there actress Soli Labbart told of her photo series about her ageing body. It made an impression on her. “I was in the situation, that I slowly had to accept my own physical deterioration, which was accentuated by my disability. She decided to make a photo series. At first it is was supposed to be of a disabled girl, but little by little, it dawned on her that the aesthetic of the body had to be one with a grave disability, and an ageing one. What remained was to make portraits of her self. In the “Gala Dress” exhibition, Helle poses in pictures made by choreographer Tomi Paasonen in the nude and without her wheelchair. “I’ve been dependent on others since my birth and thus have never been able to choose in front of whom to be naked. But this choice, in a way, although radical, was my own. The spectator, used to trimmed bodies, is confronted with an old disabled physicality. The imagery is the opposite of our norms of beauty, which tries to hide both age and disability. “Our perception of the body is becoming increasingly streamlined. It was important for me to find the beauty of the peripheral body”, Tomi Paasonen says. A beautifully photographed disabled body criticises the current perception of beauty. However, Paasonen says that the beauty and the reflection should lie within the eyes of the spectator: “There is no pointing finger in this exhibition. The images open up a different kind of a world with a different kind of a person.” According to him disability is also natural: “Nature tries out new ways, and through it attempts to create something new. Then some mistakes work better than others. The whole human race is a result of mutation.” |
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