Katja Tähjä: Letters from a Land That Does Not Exist
“No one knows us, because we don't know ourselves.”
–from Letters from a Land That Does Not Exist, 2025
Katja Tähjä’s exhibition Letters from a Land That Does Not Exist explores memory, identity, and the intergenerational effects of war and conflict on both individuals and nations, as seen through the experiences of a family who left Iraq. The work on display at Hippolyte Studio addresses life in the diaspora and the burden of stereotypes. In Iraq, history has been deliberately erased, destroyed, and rewritten. The creation of a nation-state always demands a narrative—but who has the right to tell it?
The starting point is personal for the artist. Tähjä’s spouse is from Iraq, where he fled as a teenager with his family to Finland. His extended family lives around the world in diaspora, and the youngest generation has never visited their parents’ homeland. For some, Iraq is a distant and frightening place, while others long for it—or for a time that no longer exists. Iraq has undergone such vast and violent changes in recent decades that those who left at different times each left behind a different country. The family’s memories and stories form fragments that merge with personal imaginings, the surrounding society’s perspectives, and the current living environment. What emerges is a land that does not exist.
The exhibition features portraits, images of family letters, objects, and details from family albums. Memories cling to fleeting moments—closeness between loved ones, hands that held on. The former homeland is a state of being, different shades of light. Childhood. It is not a place one can travel to. Iraq’s violent history appears in screen-captured explosions—geographically distant, yet their psychological shockwaves reach into present-day homes.
Katja Tähjä (b. 1976, Raahe) is a Helsinki-based photographer and Master of Arts. For over a decade, her work has explored themes related to migration. Tähjä is particularly interested in how political decisions and broad societal phenomena affect individual lives. Tähjä studied at the University of Art and Design Helsinki, Department of Photography, and received a Master of Arts degree in 2011. Her best-known works include the books Paperittomat (Undocumented, HS Kirjat, 2010) and Karkotetut (Deported, S&S, 2016), created in collaboration with journalist Kaisa Viitanen. The books tell the stories of migrants living without residence permits and people deported to their countries of origin. Paperittomat was awarded the Finland Prize in 2012. Karkotetut and its related exhibition received the Award for Best Visual Journalism in 2017.
Tähjä’s work has been supported by the Patricia Seppälä Foundation and the Finnish Cultural Foundation.
Free entrance