Tampere Kunsthalle

Hinni Huttunen & AnnaLeena Prykäri
A love letter, perhaps
2025-2026
Text

Is it all just a utopian dream?

We collect lived life stories into our suitcase to be shown to the world. 

Is it all a (queer) utopian dream?

I want to write you a letter. A love letter, perhaps. About friendship and comrades. About the freedom struggle and the fight on the barricades.

Is our dream still utopian? 

I wear my keffiyah with pride. With horror, I see the news scrolling up and down between my fingers, and I cannot justify the capitalist system's major failure. Is it all a utopian dream, a horror story?

I want to kiss you on your cheek, forehead, kiss you on your fingers and palms, and let you, my dear, have some rest. Because utopian dreams that we chase don't come alone. 

They come with physical and emotional pain, they chase us into our dreams built on heterosexual paradoxical ideas.

I want you to rest - I want you to keep fighting. 

I want you to do so before I must say to you, “rest in resistance”.

LOVE LETTER

I like the sound of a love letter. 

I am writing this love letter to you

you

you 

you

you

Never have I ever written a love letter before, and I am not sure what to say. 

I guess what I want to say is: 

I OWE ALL MY HAPPINESS TO MY QUEERNESS

ALL MY FRIENDS ARE SO BRAVE, AND I WOULD BE NOTHING WITHOUT YOU

I THINK ABOUT MOTHERS WITHOUT THEIR CHILDREN, AND IT MAKES ME CRY

EVERY NIGHT 

We share the love for working hard, showing up, and caring. When I think about you, I think about your yellow faux fur coat and backpacks, and late nights. You deserve all the utopian dreams. 

CONTINUATION 

In my wildest dreams, I’d imagined being loved. 

Just as I. Just as you. No borders, no nations. No patriarchal systems. 

In my wildest dreams, I’d imagined it to be fulfilled. 

By you and I. 

Imagine being loved by another. 

No borders, no nations. 

No deportations. 

I imagined I dreamed. I was fulfilled. To be 

fully yours. 

LANGUAGE LANGUAGE 

LOVE LANGUAGE

notes from a totally rainy December night 

during the last month, I have

carried 20 boxes of belongings

(I have had 8 studios)

backed up all my photographs

thought about you moving and already hoping to visit

kept imagining my child as an adult

stayed up too late, ate too much candy

Is it hard or easy for you to say mä rakastan sua?

What words do you think hold the most resistance?

LANGUAGE LANGUAGE 

LOVE LANGUAGES 

It comes easily for me to say mä rakastan sua for the other. 

The invisible force of life that loudly speaks to us all. Longing for, waiting for, searching for. Through miscalculated relationships and long overdue expectations. Some dates just should have an expiration date. Without mä rakastan sua, there is no resistance. There is no resistance without love, care, and creativity, maybe. You owe all your happiness to your queerness, and I ask you to keep doing so. 

LOST IN TRANSLATION REMAINS UNDERSTANDING FOR LOVE 

TRANS TRANS -formation 

TRANS TRANS TRANSFORMATIONS 

Still, it can get hard to say to myself mä rakastan sua ja mä rakastan mua. 

Utopian dream of a female body that co-exists with nonbinary. She her, they them - nobody knows anymore how to deal with my pronouns. I love ’em both. 

I carry the box of expectations, a heavy burden and sorrow. Guess it has always been in that way, as long as I can remember. Since my childhood, a 9-year-old with boobs and a 12-year-old with a late teenage body, figuring it all out in a small shitty town in the middle of nowhere. Clueless regarding their gender, lost in an imaginary world that took me away from the place that I was designed to be called home. 

MY BODY MY ENEMY MY BODY MY HARBOUR LONG LIVE PUSSY RIOT 

I feel how the periphery connects us. I can see the small town dead city dead devil style of r esilience in so many of my friends who, like you and me, had to leave before they could even imagine saying mä rakastan SUA JA MUA. When I think about how the deserted hometown streets live in all of us, I feel less alone. 

I have been carrying your words with me. Keep coming back to the notes you have left on my phone. Reading them again and again and again and again and again. They make me think about first kisses that pass through, and weird places I’ve been looking for love, and the companionships that are based on shared dreams. 

STICKING TOGETHER

happens in text messages, checking if you made it home

happens when working together

happens when showing up 

in late-night meetings

in letting you sleep in

in studios and in kitchens

in art

And so we are here, writing to each other, and I really wish this (love) letter stays.