Collaged Cities / 2021-2024 / Collage on MDF board / Gabriella Presnal

This project was conducted at Helsinki Central Library Oodi. It was a short, two-week pop-up station where people could draw and write what they hoped to see more of in the future. Many wrote and drew about issues like sexual, racial, and gender equality, sustainability, education, public transportation, as well as themes of kindness and love for the people and animals around us. The project resulted in between 400-600 A6 drawings, some were also double-sided. The participant group was of all ages (i.e. - anyone going through the library). The drawings were then transformed into three large collages which also sourced recycled magazine material from Oodi.

The idea is to give people a chance to visualize what are the parts of our community that are important to them and their future (ex. Forests, animals, schools, etc). The project is inspired by art, current cultural and political ideas, spatiality, and nostalgia. I hoped for the piece to offer a space where we can reimagine our own reality and clarify what we hope to see from our futures. The series is also an investigation of spatiality and how it may affect our ideas of our future.