The artworks in the exhibition form into a set of Imagine us, where imaginary events, situations, and emotions have been transformed into woodcuts. First, there is a thought that becomes an image as a woodcut picture on the surface of the plywood. Afterwards, it’s been copied through a printing ink onto a paper as a mirror image. The paper ends up on a wall, and from there, creates new thoughts.

It takes a while to find one’s own way to work and to make a new material bend for one’s own ways of expression. Woodblock printing is both physical and slow. The stiffness of birch plywood is limiting and challenging but yet also rewarding.

Every piece of the exhibition is a unique woodcut print. The works have been hand-printed with oil-based ink by rubbing and clued straight to the wall. The prints will be destroyed after the exhibition.

Noora Nio-Juss (b. 1976) is a visual artist based in Helsinki. Nio-Juss graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki as a Master of Arts in 2017 and as a Bachelor of Arts from the Estonia Art Academy in 2000, as a major in painting. Nio-Juss has had many solo exhibitions and she’s taken part in many group exhibitions in Finland and abroad. The last exhibitions have taken place at the Tallinn Art Hall Gallery, Riihimäki Art Museum and VS Gallery in Fiskars. Her works can be found from the collections of the Finnish National Gallery, Helsinki Art Museum, the Paulo Foundation, the city of Mänttä and Tampere Art Museum, amongst others. The past five years Nio-Juss has focused on woodblock printmaking. She is the nominee of the Queen Sonja Print Award 2020.

The exhibition is supported by the Alfred Kordelin Foundation, the Arts Promotion Center Finland and the Anita Snellman Foundation.