When I was studying at Sibelius Academy a course supervisor told us: We will take mutual pictures tomorrow for the university magazine. I did not care about what he said and we engaged in studying, but we had a judo lesson as part of the course.
Oh, judo tomorrow. This means that we will take the picture while practicing judo. A skinny young man with Middle Eastern features entered, so I thought, but my thoughts were wrong, as he is from Chile, his name was Adolfo Vera.
He entered with a camera and the supplies of a professional photographer. We got to know each other after that. I knew that he was an artist, and not was only a professional photographer. We met more than once, we became friends and we discussed about my project that I was busy with, “The Migrant Artists Network Project.” That was in 1998.
Adolfo participated with us in the network of immigrant artists in the expanded exhibition in which 42 artists from all over the world that was in the year 2000. I was very impressed by his ideas that are different from the usual. Yes, he is a photographer, but he treats his pictures and puts them in a case. His work, which amazed many visitors in the mentioned exhibition.
He placed pictures on a very small fence in the ground, he place them against the wall, put a light, and also placed broken mirrors directly on the wall to reflect the smashing of pictures of people that were old pictures, as well as what he placed on the fence in front of the wall.
Adolpho Vera thinks a lot about what he produces. He creates his artistic works with extreme precision, and carefully plans his works in every place where he displays his works. I believe that he does not like randomness in work at all.
In his latest exhibition at the Museum of Photography in Helsinki, in which he presented his ideas and perceptions about this world in which we live and how power structures determine the human race, he places himself in the midst of the societies in which he lived, where he poses many questions as an individual and how he adapts to society as a An essential part of this community.
Adolfo asks about the power that the individual has and how to use it in society. Does society have authority? If there is any authority, how does the artist adapt within this society, or in other words, within this societal authority.
The exhibition contained… his pictures and… work. He took some of those pictures of himself between 1977 and 2023, on his journey through life and migration. He focuses on the people in the pictures, the people he helps on his journeys, in his travels, at all the stops he takes. Navigate with it in this wide and narrow world.
His travels between Chile and Finland, which began in 1977, during which he left Chile and took refuge in Finland. His many pictures are a search between two worlds: the world of dictatorship that Chile suffered from and the world of calm and stability that he enjoyed in Finland.
His keen eye detects mistakes in power, directing a lot of criticism to it, and also examines the role of the individual in this world who uses power wrongly, as he uses old images and places them in new relationships.
This exhibition raises many questions about the individual’s relationship with society, about how things work in society, and whether a person must be effective in order to prove himself, and if he does not, what will he be?
Adolfo Vera was born in Chile in 1956. Vera currently lives and works in Vantaa. He received his degree as Master of Art from the department of photography at the University of Art and Design Helsinki in 1982. Vera’s work has been exhibited in group and solo exhibitions and several publications since 1983. Multilayeredness formed by the artist’s reworking of his own works and references to visual art, literary works, and historical events is central to Vera’s practice
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