A passage is a channel or opening which a person or thing may pass through. It also means the transition from one stage to another, or a journey.
Passages is a body of digital collage photographs which Kaisu Koivisto has worked on since 2021. She begins with a photograph of a space, building or a structure which she alters through adding and removing details. The additions lead the process of viewing the image. Often the additions block and disturb the gaze, which result in an ambiguous reading of the photograph. At times the images become nearly abstract.
Koivisto photographs and films in anonymous, often abandoned constructions: military bases, factories and clinics. For the series Passages Koivisto has photographed among others at the Kreenholm factory in Narva, Estonia, in 2017 and 2022 while staying at the Narva Artist Residency, as well as at Linnahall building in Tallin, Estonia.
By means of digital collage Koivisto adds and subtracts information to suggest new ways of seeing the images, thus deconstructing and reconstructing the histories and meanings of images.
”My approach to making the collages is very intuitive. I examine the cues in the images and at times amplify them, or at times hide them.The series is much about imagining light, colors and shapes into the images and the spaces they depict. My additions create new spaces and ideas,” Kaisu Koivisto tells about her artistic practice.
Kaisu Koivisto is interested in histories and microhistories: circumstances and changes which shape the here and now, leading into an uncertain future. Post-industrial spaces which she photographs may find a new life. Or, they are destroyed, or taken over by forces of nature which break concrete structures and cover everything with vegetation in a continuous cycle of life.