Divas and village women

The photographs from the museum’s collection contain traces of people who once lived and moments of history that reach us like the lights of distant stars after a long journey.

The oldest photographs date back more than a hundred years and the most recent were taken in the 1960s, before Kerava became a city. The photographs show fairground divas, farmers’ wives and lively girls posing. The photographs and objects in the collections recount the fates of women, but their stories are inevitably full of breaks, gaps and inaccuracies.

Family stories and individual women’s fates emerge from the photographs donated by agencies, companies, associations and active local people. Some of the women appear under their own names and have been brought to life by artificial intelligence. Some of them touch us with their mere being. The photographs hopefully reveal something that words alone cannot convey. Something that falls beyond the reach of language and rational thought.

Kerava is participating in an XR museum project with Järvenpää and Tuusula. The virtual reality experiences developed in the project have now been made part of Sinkka’s exhibition for the first time. The exhibition includes a VR game inspired by the shooting range at the Sariola fairground and a virtual trip to the old centre of Kerava, led by avatar guides (in Finnish).