I am an artist/filmmaker whose work is concerned with questions of belonging and displacement. In April 2023 I travelled with a camera to a wooden house near the border town in Eastern Finland. The area was fought over during wars between 1939 and 1944. My mother and her family, who lived in the house were neither Finnish nor Russian. They were evacuated to Sweden and never returned: some 400,000 people were evacuated as the border between Finland and the Soviet Union shifted. This submission comprises a 30-minute film installation that blends film, family interviews, archive photographs, poetry and traditional song.
Kirsten Adkins
Artist Statement
A film still from my submission, 'Singing The Wooden House' a 30 minute film loop that combines images with song and poetry to ask questions around what it means to be at home and to belong.
A cropped image of an archive photograph of children who were evacuated from their home during the Finnish Winter War in 1944. This forms part of my film submission 'Singing the Wooden House'.
This film still represents my journey with a camera across the Baltic Sea in search of a wooden house on the border zone between Finland and Russia in 2023.
New saplings mark the border zone between Finland and Russia - this was an area that was devastated by two wars between 1939 and 1944.