Jari Silomäki | We are the Revolution, after Joseph Beuys

Silomäki has built his career around a documentary-like approach in how he creates his own personal narratives. He has developed a style in interacting with his subjects that enables him to twist and expand the space between fact and fiction in creating his own conceptual language, where his hand-writing becomes part of the photographs. Silomäki follows upon Beuys’ idea that society could transform itself through art and creativity, thus setting the groundwork for his experiments with social sculpture that reflected the Fluxus attitude that "everyone is an artist”. Silomäki states, "Beuys is walking with great confidence towards the camera, suggesting that we, the viewers, could form a revolution if we joined him. Beuys was a political artist who considered art as a currency that could be used to change society. I somewhat reversed Beuys’ idea by creating and following my alter ego as an individual who becomes the object of the inevitable forces of history rather than its master. Like a tourist, I traveled to historically significant cities throughout the world that have suffered from political tragedies. But my artistic intention and experience was far different than that of a tourist. I was there to walk as many steps as there were victims due to the major political atrocities that made these cities historically significant.”