Arts Thread

In Restless Stillness (orig. Levoton tyyneys), Ivanda Jansone explores the passage of time unfolding at different speeds—perhaps even across different realities. Time becomes both an illusion and a matter of perception, shaped by the viewer's experience. Through a series of intaglio prints and charcoal drawings, Jansone introduces subtle motion into portrait and still life, two forms traditionally rooted in stillness. Gradually, a world emerges where time shifts and stretches, inviting viewers to reconsider how we experience, sense, and measure time. At the center of the narrative is a woman smoking a cigarette, posed in ways drawn from the history of visual art, from the 19th century to the present day ( Pictures of references in order of sequence: Nan Golding Suzanne with Marlboros; Auguste Leveque Portrait of Suzanne; Édouard Manet Plum Brandy; Alfred James Munnings Study for Miss Hancock; Picasso Young woman holding cigarette; Salvatore Fiume A Susette; Fabio Hurtado Travel Readings; Sarah Lucas Fighting fire with fire.) In the history of visual art women are often shown holding cigarettes, but rarely smoking them—especially in works created by male artists, suggesting an unspoken restriction. In this series, however, the cigarette burns down frame by frame, becoming a quiet metronome that marks time and silently defies the constraints of traditional representation. Around her, still life objects change: petals fall, fruit decays, forms contract—each object following its own temporal rhythm. These quiet transformations mirror the body's time, but on a different scale. The charcoal drawings, Before and After (orig. Ennen / Jälkeen), bracket the main sequence. In Before, the fruit and flowers look freshly bought, still wrapped in paper and plastic, breaking the illusion of a traditional still life and highlighting the immediacy and physical presence of the moment.In After, the woman exhales a long-held breath of smoke, She is finally liberated, fully present, and unbound from the roles and poses of art history. A hand from outside the image enters the frame, extinguishing the cigarette and breaking the illusion—shifting the viewer’s perspective and suggesting a new relationship with time and reality.