Hanneriina Moisseinen's Comics Explore Karelian History and Posthumanist Animal Relationships

Hanneriina Moisseinen, born in 1978 in Joensuu, Finland, creates comics that recover traditions from the Karelian region divided between Finland and Russia. Her first book, Syn Synty (2005), translated 'shameless stories' recorded by writer Markku Nieminen from elderly people in White Sea Karelia into pencil-drawn strips. A sequel, Setit ja partituurit (2010), adapted contemporary embarrassments using drawings and needlework reproductions. Isä (2013) employed mixed media to investigate her father's disappearance when she was ten. In 2016, Moisseinen won Finland's State Prize for Comic Art for Kannas (The Isthmus), which recounts the 1944 loss of the southern Karelian Isthmus to the Soviet Union and the forced relocation of 400,000 people. The book uses archival photographs and 50 hours of evacuee recordings, with perspectives from a shellshocked Finnish deserter and a determined milkmaid. Moisseinen's drawings balance surreal humor and poignancy, depicting scenes like a deserter using a bullet-riddled helmet to milk a cow. For ArtReview's September 2017 issue, she discusses ideas from her MA thesis on animal-human relationships, developing them into 'posthumanist animal comics' for an early 2019 exhibition at Aboa Vetus & Ars Nova Museum in Turku, Finland. Karelia is known as 'The Songsingers' Land' for its rune-singing tradition, with lesser-known 'shameless stories' traded among indigenous Karelians.