The works I did in Syria in September are still looking for an opportunity to be exhibited soon, when they are still hot and crispy. If the current regime falls, they become historical documents, which doesn't make them worse but naturally very different. I think they deserve to be shown for the first time while the status quo continues.

SYRIA FOR DUMMIES
Riiko Sakkinen - featuring Aline Azoyan, Nour Hourami, Nathalie Kargian, May Kolang, Reem Al-Naji, Nour Othman, Ahmad Qaddura, Emad Salem, Mohammad Shankal and Toufik Wazzaz.

Riiko Sakkinen co-produced a prevalent project Syria for Dummies during a one-month residency in Damascus and Aleppo. He documented the streets, interviewed local people and conducted a workshop, which resulted in this project consisting of two parts, a homonymous slideshow of 367 photos and a 25- part series of list drawings done by the participants of the workshop at Le Pont Gallery in Aleppo.

The slide show mixes three different themes: 1) Photos of president Bashar al-Assad, that the residents and shopkeepers of Damascus exhibit on their windows and walls, juxtaposing them with their other idols like Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah or Real Madrid’s Christiano Ronaldo, 2) graffiti on Damascian walls with messages from politics to pop music and love, 3) commercial imagery including local and imported product packaging and advertising.

The Aleppo Lists are written by the workshop participants, a heterogeneous group including bourgeois Christian art students and Palestinian youngsters from a refugee camp. The results range from My Favorite Perfums to Reforms I Want in My Country and from Food for Poor People to Must-haves in Syrian Armenian Girl’s Life.

It's a strange situation not to be über busy. I don't remember when was the last time that I hadn't several exhibition deadlines in the near future. I've been missing this feeling of being able just to be at the studio and work in whatever I want without thinking where the works will be exhibited and how they will be contextualized. On the other hand, I feel the blank canvas terror always when I'm back in the studio after working in other kind of projects. I have to enjoy the freedom now before it's over: I'm setting up details for numerous shows next year in Shanghai, Ljubljana, Bogotá, Madrid and some other places.

Now I'm going to draw brave Syrian superheroes, hot Mexican fortune tellers and cute Japanese cakes.

My travel agent Carmen was laughing when I told her to look for me flights and hotel in Playa de las Américas, a purpose-built holiday resort in Tenerife. Last time I went to Viajes El Corte Inglés, I got flights to Syria.

Somehow people get surprised or even annoyed when they find out that a vexatious and political artist like me does normal things. It's not like I want to live like common people, I want to do whatever common people do because actually I am one of them. On Tuesdays, I buy convenience food in Carrefour and on Sundays, I vacuum and wash my four-door compact sedan with two child safety seats. My profession is not common but when I'm at home, there's nothing extravagant in my life.

Of course, the Canary Island resort wasn't my idea. My mother and grandmother are going there and my family will join them. I really don't care what is the place if the four generations can spend few days together.

He has a powerful weapon, he charges a million a shot, an assassin that's second to none, the man with the golden gun. Lurking in some darkened doorway or crouched on a roof top somewhere, in the next room, or this very one, the man with the golden gun. Love is required whenever he is hired, it comes just before the kill, no-one can catch him, no hit man can match him, for his million dollar skill. One golden shot means another poor victim has come to a glittering end, for a price, he erases anyone - the man with the golden gun.

James Bond shot down Fransisco Scaramanga, Osama bin Laden and Muammar Gaddafi. It is fascinating to find out whose name Mr. Obama and Ms. Clinton have written next on the hit list. Is it Bashar al-Assad, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Hugo Chavez or Dr. No?

An alter ego is a second self, a second personality within a person, who is often oblivious to the persona's actions. It was coined in the early nineteenth century when dissociative identity disorder was first described by psychologists. A person with an alter ego is said to lead a double life.

I live a double life. Last week I was an artstar in Helsinki and this week I've been a househusband in a tiny village. Neither of these lives could exist without each other. My self-esteem as artist needs to be adored in the art world and my integrity as person requires to be treated just as a normal father of a family. It's all about balance. I love to live in the countryside - there are no openings, partys or dinners. I don't have to choose what to do and where to go, here I'm just with my family and work in the studio.

We moved to Cervera de los Montes six years ago. It was just when the broadband internet reached the village, a feature that makes it possible to be a globally working artist based in the periphery. It sounds terrible, but in this sense, the technology made me free.