In “Holy Melancholy” artist, researcher and teacher Juha Suonpää is playing by borrowing the past cultural layers and using their root value to reconstruct a visual identity. As a starting point for a study Juha Suonpää is staging pastiche photographs which imitate the national stereotypic ideas which even take their form close to the original paintings. Instead of plagiarism he adds inconsistent or inappropriate details, makes interruptions, and even jokes and witticism to the original ones in order to recreate new root photographs of stereotypical Finnishness.

Beside recalling the forms of well known fine art paintings, Juha Suonpää has updated and developed further on his pastiche method by deforming  and exaggerating the stylistic mannerisms often repeated in international celebrated contemporary fine art photography. In other words by imitating, secondly by creating discrepancy he denaturalizes the aesthetic forms of identity of art photography itself in Western art world and especially forms of Finnish contemporary fine art photography shown in international photo festivals.

Exploiting Santa Claus – the most celebrated commercial phenomenon in the world – is perceived as an alter ego of a Finn. Santa – that apparently neutral and innocent guy constructs the core idea of “Holy Melancholy” where loneliness and introvert character takes place in a praised and glorified form.  Following the post-modern idea and the crucial role of spectator as a reinterpretator, Suonpää is underlying the paradox of originality. When an artist is trying to make something new and outstanding – “holy” in the symbolic system of art world – one has to refer to the already established visual discourses recognized and understood by the audience. But at this very moment the originality is polluted and jeopardized by cultural repetition, stereotypes and reinterpretations.”

Juha Suonpää