Salla Tykkä's 'The Will' Explores the Gaze's Ideological Power at Studio G7 Bologna

Galleria Studio G7 in Bologna presents 'The Will,' the second installment of its Project Room series, marking Salla Tykkä's first solo exhibition in an Italian gallery. Curated by Marinella Paderni, the show centers on Tykkä's 2024 video work 'The Will,' constructed from footage gathered since the early 2000s around her studio in Helsinki's industrial outskirts. The video presents an ordinary landscape—courtyards, streets, forest edges, domestic interiors—stripped of narrative linearity, building a fragmented temporality where voids become structural. The title alludes to both the will and inclination of the gaze and a testament, an inheritance of lived time. The exhibition also features 'Contact 1–3' (2024), contact prints from a film of the artist's late father's studio, and the 'Torso' series, where Tykkä photographs her own body after an accident, marking a rare self-representation. Tykkä's work, previously recognized by Harald Szeemann who invited her to the 2001 Venice Biennale, addresses political and social themes through the interstices of the everyday and personal. The installation in Studio G7's intimate spaces forces solitary viewing, making vision a conscious and responsible act.