Untitled, 1996-2000, installation

"Sanna Sarva represents a persistent micropolitical agency in the Finnish art world. Her way of working locates her art in the field of the socially alert "new genre public art". To become realised these works need the existence of a highly conscious relationship between the artist and her audience, between the artists and the people she represents in her work, and between the artist and her environment." (L.-M. Rossi) In Manifesta 3 Sanna Sarva presents the portion of her works created from 1996 to 2000 and in this way initiates a discourse on the theme of immigration. For her work The Portrait of Values Sanna Sarva worked with five immigrants, whom she photographed and interviewed about their values. Together with the text boards, she has displayed their portraits in a government office handling the immigration issue and making decisions about the lives of the people represented in the photographs. On another occasion she left at the reception desk of a hotel in Helsinki a stack of artist's books telling the story of a Ghanaian man travelling "from Africa to Africa and finally to Finland". The power relationships in and around the artworks change and vary in different surroundings. Sanna Sarva creates perceptive accounts of these changes, which also become visible in the context of Manifesta 3.