Sheer images

Jenny Gerow

Marja Kolu’s diaphanous “Curtain,” draped in front of Fayerweather Hall on Carr’s Hill, is part of the Art Department’s “Nordic Postmodernism” group exhibition, on display through Nov. 30.

“Nordic artist Marja Kolu has collected delicate fabrics and lace curtains for years from southeasatern Finland and the province of Karelia,” said exhibition curator and U.Va. art professor Dean Dass. “But these beautiful fabrics now assembled in our gallery do more than evoke a nostalgic time in some undeterminable past, for Karelia is a loaded term, and refers to the Winter War, when Russia invaded and later annexed this province. Many thousands of Finns fled. In the installations of Marja Kolu, simple everyday objects have often turned against us like this, awakening deadlier troubled memories,” he said of this semester’s artist in residence.

Other artists featured in the Fayerweather exhibition, whose works include photographs, prints and birch bark sculpture, are Kjetil Ingvar Berge, Hanna Holma, Jyrki Puhakka, Juha-Pekka Inkinen, Piia Lehti, Jyrki Markkanen and Eeva-Liisa Isomaa.