Vastarinta vapaus voitto (Verity Vocation Victory, Восстание Воля Выигрыш)

Series of postcards, 2022

The work is an intervention in the militaristic display of the Cavalry Museum in Lappeenranta. It is part of the exhibition ‘Sattuneista syistä / For Obvious Reasons’ at the Lappeenranta Art Museum, curated by Jaana Kokko and Marketta Haila.

As reaction to the accelerated rearmament in the interwar years in Finland the antiwar sentiments grew.

The activities of the war resisters were dangerous as in this period 45000 people were sentenced for treason or of planning of such. During the Second World War 157 Finnish citizens were sentenced to death, of which 85 were realised.

The Police chief of Turku city wrote in a report addressed to the Turku and Pori county Police inspector dated on 15th of October 1941 that on a few occasions there have been found pieces of cardboard cut in the shape of letter V. The report also informed that anti-war slogans, such as ‘Down with war’, ‘Down with Germany’, ‘Death to fascists’, ‘Victory to humankind’ had been written on these pieces of cardboard.

There are piles of six different cards in the museum, placed outside of the display cases and free for visitors to take. They are hand printed. The sentences in the cards in the Cavalry Museum are from the printed material of anti-war organisations Suomen Antimilitaristinen Liitto, Kansanoikeuksien ja Työn Puolustuskomitea and Ihmisoikeuksien Liitto and they date back to 1930s or early 1940s. The papers of the above organisations are kept at The Peoples Archives / Kansan Arkisto.

A part of the work is a performative lecture in the Cavalry museum on 20th of May 2022.