The Yard Tree of Joutsa, 2025
Linocut, silkscreen
Part of a portrait series of significant sacred trees.
The Joutsa rowan tree stands in the centre of the small town of Joutsa in Central Finland, where its once ceremonial and sacred role was redefined by foreign authorities in the 19th century as a place of punishment.
Each tree carries traces of different eras and political regimes, shifts in religious meaning, and stories of disappearing ethnic fragments.
Prekup approaches these themes through the rhythm of branches, the textures of bark, and the abstraction of linocut, asking: “What do we actually preserve when we remember?” and “Can the transmission of tradition also be exhausting or damaging?”
The work does not offer definitive answers but opens a space in which remembrance becomes both a sacred and a fragile act.
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