White Death (2013-2014) is a photographic installation that examines the relationship between the personal and the political. Inspired by the life of the Finnish Winter War sniper, Simo Häyhä, the work uses photography as a vehicle for exploring ideas related to agency and voice, as well as the historical narrative, representation and identity. More specifically, activating the intensity, urgency and violence of the female experience, White Death uses conceptual, theoretical, and aesthetic references to put critical pressure on political and social questions.
White Death is based firmly around Häyhä; the mythological figure who represents, at once, the traditional landowner subsisting as a hunter and farmer (and the narrative of an idyllic simplicity related thereto), and the brutal and inhumane ultra-violence of modern warfare that he, personally, inflicted on the world around him as a sniper who, with calculating and technologically enhanced precision, personally extinguished the lives of 542 other individuals. This “record”, set in a period of 100 days during the winter of 1939-1940, has yet to be surpassed by any other sniper, and earned Häyhä the nickname White Death.
The resulting work is not a historical document, but, rather, an abstraction of this historical figure that Heldebro—with forceful and uninhibited freedom—has created. She has sought to reject the premise of the patriarchal, nationalistic, homogenous, political mythology of military history and the reverence implied thereby; using photographs, not as accurate documentations of history, but rather as a means of obsessively pursuing a hyper-personal representation of a Finnish national hero, as processed through her lens, that of a woman artist.
Johanna Heldebro is a visual artist from northern Sweden; her photo-based work often turns to everyday imagery, obsession, the monotony of routine and repetition and testing the boundaries of the socially accepted. She holds a BFA from Concordia University (Montréal, CA), as well as an MFA in Photography, Video and Related Media from School of Visual Arts (NYC), where she was the recipient of the Paula Rhodes Memorial Award for her thesis work, To Come Within Reach of You...
Heldebro's work has been exhibited throughout Europe and North America, including at MOMENTUM 8: Tunnel Vision – the Nordic Biennial of Contemporary Art (NO), the Finnish Museum of Photography in Helsinki (FI), the 4th Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art in Moscow (RU), Galleri Box (SE), Gallery Steinsland Berliner (SE), Khyber Centre for the Arts (CA), and Launch F18 (US).
Johanna is the co-editor of LAURA, a print arts periodical that she launched in 2010 together with her long-time collaborator Jared Leon. Between 2012 and 2014 she also curated Art POP, the visual arts component of the POP Montreal International Music Festival. Programming under her direction included works/performances by: Phil Collins, Cory Arcangel, Elizabeth Price, Vito Acconci, Dan Graham, Jaimie Warren and Lucky Dragons, amongst others.
Johanna Heldebro divides her time between Stockholm (SE) & Toronto (CA)
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