Camilla Edström Ödemark (March 29, 2015): Exposing White Voids

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Camilla Edström Ödemark is an artist from Åland who moved from her native Mariehamn to Sweden after she graduated from high school. Her artwork hits a sensitive spot especially if you’re in that sometimes challenging situation of adapting to a new country. 

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Ödemark says that her work focuses on what or who is “abnormal” or “alien” to a group identity and how they help maintain the status quo. In the White Voids exhibition, which opens on April 2 in Helsinki at 6pm at the Third Space Gallery (Tarkk’ampuanktu 18), Ödemark takes us on a journey to white hegemony.

The journey may surprise some while others may immediately identify with the narrative landscapes she places before us.

Camilla Edström Ödemark (Photo by Philippe Beer-Gabel)

White Voids is her first solo exhibition in Finland. Her work has been exhibited in the Moderna Bar at the Museum of Modern Art and the Multicultural Center in Sweden and in Finland (Vapaan Taiteen Tila and Aine Art Museum).

One of the first questions that springs to mind about Ödemark’s work is how a woman from a provincial place like Åland became interested in the “abnormal” and “alien.”

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Camilla Edström Ödemark’s White Voids art exhibition to open in Helsinki on April 2

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Migrant Tales will publish a feature on Camilla Edström Ödemark’s and her White Voids art exhibition which will open on April 2 at the Third Space Gallery, Tarkk’ampujankatu 18, Helsinki. 

Camilla writes: 

In order to suppress you need to mask yourself as a true underdog. It must be your rights that are threatened, your words that are silenced. No-one likes a bully. When in public, you need to make sure to hide your true intentions. It is your culture that is being suppressed. They might or might not have an agenda. You are in minority. They are mocking you. Make sure people know that war is coming. In order to suppress you need to prepare. 

Grand opening at 18.00-21.00 on April 2

Opening hours: 15.00-16.00, April 3-9

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Defining white Finnish privilege #20: Labeling Others to strengthen “us” and “them”

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There were two news stories where the term “person with foreign background” was used by the media this week. The first case was reported on Wednesday, when two people with ”foreign backgrounds” were attacked in Joensuu and the second one a day later, when a suspected Finnish man who tried drive over a fifteen-year-old ”with foreign background.”

After some simple investigative journalism that none of the national media cared to do, Migrant Tales revealed that some o the gang-rape suspects of Tapanila were Finns even if the police labeled them in a statement as teenagers with “foreign backgrounds.”

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Read full story (in Finnish) here.

Why do the media and police continue to use such a deceptive term to label people who are not white native-speaking Finns? The answer is white Finnish privilege.

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Migrant Tales Literary: A return in Pixles

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I pulled out my laptop and went on Google Earth. I typed in my mother’s childhood home address, but Google Earth didn’t recognize any matching location. I decided to turn to my mother and carried the spacecraft-like laptop to her. After placing it on top of an orange table mat, I asked her to help me find her parent’s house. She reacted surprised at first, but then went on to ask me if you can see it on there; if she can really revisit home on that stained screen marked by fingerprints. We typed in Hospital Street and the screen started to zoom into the peninsula my mother called home. We began driving down the road with the cursor and our fingers carefully placed on the laptop’s finger pad. While the images constantly shifted between green and light brown patches, she lit up. Her usually tired eyes, worn out by underpaid overtimes, brightened up and started narrating stories of places, encounters and histories. She suddenly looked younger than she had just minutes before; like the girl she’d describe she was but left behind when she crossed that fatal line.

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Perussuomalaiset ad stresses “us” versus “them”

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The Perussuomalaiset (PS)* ad below (in Finnish) is the pits. The only mention it makes about our culturally and ethnically diverse society is picture of a Muslim woman. All of the people in the ad are white Finns. It uses slogans like: “Let’s build a good Finland” and “the Perussuomalaiset are on the side of (white) Finns.”

This ad is further proof that the PS is a party that is against New Finns and ready to fuel intolerance in this country at our expense.

A small piece of advice to the PS: This country was never yours, will never be, because this country is ours.

The PS’ view of Finland as this ad shows is what’s wrong with this country today. Finnish racism excludes people who are different from them as these ad clearly shows.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kD6yziZ7NhU

* The Finnish name for the Finns Party is the Perussuomalaiset (PS). The names adopted by the PS, like True Finns or Finns Party, promote in our opinion nativist nationalism and xenophobia. We therefore prefer to use the Finnish name of the party on our postings. 

See also Perussuomalaisten vaalimainos korostaa “he” ja “me” 

RoPS coach Juha Malinen gets snubbed by the Football Association of Finland for inappropriate tweet

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The head coach of Rovaniemen Pallo Seura (RoPS), Juha Malinen, has stuck his foot in his mouth again. Contrary to the first time in April, when he announced that he had the most “Finnish team” in the country according to the surnames of the players, he is now embroiled in another scandal. 

The Football Association of Finland (FAF) swiftly snubbed Malinen’s tweet in a statement, where he groups Finnish and “foreign” surnames even if those with former surnames are Finns. FAF said  that “all of the under 21-year players on the national team are Finns…”

It was therefore inappropriate for the RoPS coach to group players in such a manner, according to FAF. 

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This is the tweet that got Malinen in trouble again.  

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Perussuomalaisten vaalimainos korostaa “he” ja “me”

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Perussuomalaisten vaalimainos on pohjanoteeraus. Ainoa viittaus meidän kasvavasta monikulttuurisesta ja etnisestä yhteiskunnasta on muslimi nainen. Kaikki ihmiset vaalimainoksessa ovat valkoisia suomalaisia. Iskulauseet ovat: Rakennetaan hyvä Suomi ja Perussuomalaiset (valkoisia) suomalaisten puolella. 

Tämä vaalimainos todistaa, että Perussuomalaiset ovat uusia suomalaisia vastaan ja valmiita lisäämän suvaitsemattomuutta Suomessa meidän kustannuksella.

Pieni vinkki Perussuomalaisille: Tämä maa ei ole koskaan ollut vain teidän, eikä koskaan tule olemaan, koska tämä maa on myös meidän.

Perussuomalaisten näkemys Suomesta on juuri se mikä mättää yhteiskunnassa tänään. Suomalainen rasismi syrjii eikä osallista toisia niin kuin vaalimainos antaa ymmärtää.

https://youtu.be/kD6yziZ7NhU

 

You can read the same opinion piece in English here. 

 

Nunca más: 24 de marzo de 1976 y Rodolfo Walsh

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Este 24 de marzo, conmemorando a esta fecha infame en la historia argentina, dedico este humilde escrito  a Rodolfo Walsh quien murió un día después del primer aniversario de la dictadura militar de Jorge Rafael Videla. 

Aquí publicamos su “Carta abierta a la Junta militar en 1977, al cumplirse un año del golpe de Estado de 1976:”

 CARTA ABIERTA DE UN ESCRITOR A LA JUNTA MILITAR  

1. La censura de prensa, la persecución a intelectuales, el allanamiento de mi casa en el Tigre, el asesinato de amigos queridos y la pérdida de una hija que murió combatiéndolos, son algunos de los hechos que me obligan a esta forma de expresión clandestina después de haber opinado libremente como escritor y periodista durante casi treinta años.

El primer aniversario de esta Junta Militar ha motivado un balance de la acción de gobierno en documentos y discursos oficiales, donde lo que ustedes llaman aciertos son errores, los que reconocen como errores son crímenes y lo que omiten son calamidades.

El 24 de marzo de 1976 derrocaron ustedes a un gobierno del que formaban parte, a cuyo desprestigio contribuyeron como ejecutores de su política represiva, y cuyo término estaba señalado por elecciones convocadas para nueve meses más tarde.

En esa perspectiva lo que ustedes liquidaron no fue el mandato transitorio de Isabel Martínez sino la posibilidad de un proceso democrático donde el pueblo remediara males que ustedes continuaron y agravaron.

Ilegítimo en su origen, el gobierno que ustedes ejercen pudo legitimarse en los hechos recuperando el programa en que coincidieron en las elecciones de 1973 el ochenta por ciento de los argentinos y que sigue en pie como expresión objetiva de la voluntad del pueblo, único significado posible de ese “ser nacional” que ustedes invocan tan a menudo.

Invirtiendo ese camino han restaurado ustedes la corriente de ideas e intereses de minorías derrotadas que traban el desarrollo de las fuerzas productivas, explotan al pueblo y disgregan la Nación.

Una política semejante solo puede imponerse transitoriamente prohibiendo los partidos, interviniendo los sindicatos, amordazando la prensa e implantando el terror más profundo que ha conocido la sociedad argentina.  

https://youtu.be/ShN809tDPNE

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