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Terhi Hakola

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Other House (Toinen Talo), 2021

Other House is an installation containing a built ‘house’, with constructed and found objects, and a video playing in its dark backroom. Borne from two important houses of my life - my grandmother’s house in rural Finland and the burnt family house in rural NSW - this work talks about loss and hope. The life of the house entangles with human lives across generations.

Other House (Toinen Talo), 2021
Other House (Toinen Talo), installation detail
Other House (Toinen Talo), installation detail 2

A tall Liquidambar styraciflua -tree towers in our urban backyard.

She is over 100 years old and has witnessed lives of other families before us; she observes humans’ restlessness.

Liquidambar is not an Australian native tree. I am not native either. We are immigrants from faraway lands. We have become friends – she is the older and wiser of us, and my confidant. She listens, and sometimes responds with a hum. She sees far, over the entire neighbourhood.

My friend Liquidambar will still be standing, pushing against the foundations of our house, long after I am gone.