Dies Irae, in English, Day of Wrath, is the Latin name for the Soul Mass Requiem. The author of the text is thought to be the Franciscan brother Tuomas of Celano (1200-1265). The first verse of the poem reads: “The day of wrath, that day, will dissolve the world in ashes: (this is) the testimony of David along with Sibyl”. Dies Irae is in the hymnbook of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland under number 158, entitled “Terrible Day of Hate!”. The first half of the text tells how all the evil deeds of man are finally revealed and “nothing will remain unpunished”. The other half of the poem changes the perspective of revenge on the author’s own guilt and prayer: ”I sigh, like the guilty one: my face reddens in guilt: Spare the imploring one, O God.”
Journey to darkness
I’ve used the metaphor that the subject of the drawing is like a hike in the wilderness – I can choose where I go, but I don’t know where I end up. In 2019, I started a series of drawings that confront human evil. I know I am dealing with a difficult subject that would be easier to forget than to face.
Why do I study evil in my art? As a visual artist and a theologian specializing in ethics, I have drifted into these existentialist questions. I think it’s good for a person to explore their own dark sides. We each have wounds and it is valuable to feel our own deficient behavior. We need to see ourselves in a good light.
Under the right circumstances, many ordinary people have ended up as cold users of violence. War is a good example of this. Very quickly, the images of the enemy suppress the neighbor’s sight and both parties commit intolerable deeds. As I investigate evil, I also have to ask: Could it be me?
There is also a profound desire for justice in humanity. As I draw a series of events filled with unexplained evil, I come to the conclusion that justice will never be achieved for many victims. Accepting that fact seems almost impossible. The subjects of my drawings do not leave me alone. Maybe that’s why I’m drawing evil. Maybe the drawing is like a prayer: “Deliver from evil”.
Real events
The “Dies Irae – A Day of Wrath” drawing series depicts events that haunt my mind: instruments of torture, violence against children and massacres. The drawings in the series are based on real events and places. In my works I have described e.g. Koskela teenage murder, the torture of Abu Ghraib in Iraq and the events in Utøya, Norway. However, the victims of these horrific acts must not be forgotten. I feel that evil deeds pass in lines through my body and in all its gloom the final work can be comforting, even beautiful. The pencil drawings are 115 x 150 cm.
Man knows how to be creative in his cruelty and is able to turn machines that were originally designed for a good purpose into weapons of destruction. The Berlin truck attack took place on 19 December 2016 at Breitscheidplatz at the Berlin Christmas Market in Germany, when a terrorist drove a Scania truck into the crowd. The attack killed 12 people and injured 48.
The killing of a teenager in Koskela shocked Finns in December 2020. when a 16-year-old boy was murdered cruelly by three boys of the same age.
The Brazen Bull an ancient Greek device of torture and execution. The condemned were locked inside the device, and a fire was set under it, heating the metal until the person inside was roasted to death.
Gösta Serlachius Fine Arts Foundation’s collections.
Dulab or tyre is a method of torture used in the Syrian civil war in the 2000s. In it, the victim was forced into a car tyre and hung up, beaten and even burned alive.
Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma collection
In this drawing, I depict the crucifixion as I imagine it was done in all its horror.
Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma collection
This method of torture was developed in the Middle Ages by the Spanish Inquisitors of the Catholic Church. When I drew this work, the first spring of the corona pandemic was going on.
“Auschwitz Tiger” Willhelm Boger developed this method of torture, which was used to torture political prisoners in Auschwitz.
In this art work, I continued to reflect on Abu Ghraib and the 9/11 connection. How a person is able to torture another person so brutally. Could I be a torturer? This method of torture was developed by the Inquisitors of the medieval Catholic Church. It was also used by the Nazis, for example, in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp and by U.S. soldiers in Iraq. In November 2003, Manadel al-Jamadi, a terrorist suspect, was tortured to death in Abu Ghraib prison.
This work is a reconstruction of the life of Elisabeth Fritzl in the basement of a house in Amstetten, Austria. She was imprisoned by her father for 30 years and gave birth to seven children there. The hands of the drawing are from a letter by the liberated children and Elizabeth.
9.11. 2001 The United States and the entire Western world were shocked. Images of the collapsing Twin towers also remained on my retinas while watching live television. This was the beginning of a blatant continuum of violence that continues in the countries of the Middle East. One evil deed led to another evil deed. The name of the work comes from the gate of Abu Ghraib prison. There, U.S. soldiers brutally tortured Iraqi prisoners and took humiliating photographs of them.
The events of this drawing have haunted my mind for a long time. Fear of ”candy man” became ingrained in the subconscious of Finnish children and parents of children. In March 1989, police found two burnt bodies of an eight-year-old girl in the back door of a Ford Granada in Myllypuro, Helsinki.
The island of Utøya is located on Lake Tyrifjoden, about 40 km northwest of Oslo. 22.7. 2011, a man arrived on the island and called the young people together: “I have important information to say, this is not dangerous.” He then shot 69 people, most of them young, with expanding fragmented Dumdum bullets. This drawing is a kind of monument to the dead on the island.
Private collection
This work combines a floor plan of St. Peter’s Church and Michael Jackson’s Neverland. The subject of the drawing is the exploitation of young boys in the Catholic Church for centuries and the suppression of their voices.
Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma collection
I once traveled to Krakow and visited Auschwitz. My biggest shock was Auschwitz II, Auschwitz-Birkenau, and its incomprehensible size. The muddy field went on indefinitely and was once full of barracks, full of starving people on their way to the furnaces.
In this opening work of Dies Irae series, I entered into the deep end of evil, violence against children. 8-year-old Vilja Eerika died in Helsinki as a result of long-term abuse on Mother’s Day 2012. The texts in the drawing, the sun and flowers are direct copies of Mother’s Day greetings sent by Eerika to her mother.