Jukka RUSANEN, Finland

« Virginia », 2025,

150 x 100 cm, Oil on canvas

LOOKING FOR THE CORE
When I think about what Europe is like today, my mind is filled with sadness, confusion and frustration. The Europe I was born into and grew up in seems to have disappeared. The values and structures on which I felt our common values were based seem to be fading. Selfishness, greed and short-sightedness have emerged. Being an artist and a human being has become more uncertain, and collective thinking has become fragmented. In my search for a portrait of Europe, my gaze turns to history and tradition. My aim has been to find a European core that embodies the values that I see as supporting the soul of our continent. I see free thinking and especially the thinkers who have strengthened it as such a force. From my point of view, the most important influences in recent history are the French writer and film director Marguerite Duras, also the French Simone Veil, who was a politician, and the English writer Virginia Woolf. All these people are united by thinking that went against the current and that built and expanded the foundations of thinking. We can turn to these foundations and take support when our own and our shared world is shaking. Their legacy serves as a reminder that an individual’s work and thinking play a role in building a better world together. The reason why Virginia Woolf ended up in my work is partly personal. Woolf’s work a Room of One`s Own once awakened me to see how the world was built on men’s terms and needs. She made me look at the world from a different angle, and that angle looked better, even though that angle also raised a number of painful and challenging questions.