In summer 2016, artist duo SASHAPASHA travelled across northern Karelia to the White Sea-Baltic Canal. Throughout this trip, they collected various items and findings, which form the basis of KANAVA art project. Lids from canned fish found in the ruins of a Belomorsk city fish factory, and tin circles framed by birds’ feathers collected on the Gulf of Finland’s coast, become strange dehumanised jewellery.

Forced labour was used in the timber industry when exporting and selling raw wood abroad, and this fact the USSR attempted to conceal. Gulag inmates carved Messages and initials into the logs to leave evidence of penal labour.