Summer 2024 – Secret Rooms
The »Secret Rooms« program will step into a frozen moment in time, exploring forgotten and closed spaces in the neighborhood of Jakobstad and Nykarleby, Finland. Both towns are old, with many unique buildings, that reflect the present, but also the needs of previous generations, through different building materials, styles and locations. Many rooms and houses have been renovated and given new uses, while there are mysterious facilities, empty and abandoned.
JUNE 2024
The press is talking about us:
Österbottens Tidning, June 26th, 2024
Pietarsaaren Sanomat, June 19th, 2024
JEFF BIZIEAU, dancer, performer and choreographer living in Nice, France. Jeff Bizieau is the co-founder of the multi-arts dance company «Le Sixièmétage», together with Pascal Renault. With «Le Sixièmétage» he creates physical theatre shows that summon alternately in between contemporary dance and visual arts, where the human is at the center of any proposal. Jeff Bizieau creates dance performances where the body is strongly committed and where poetry and sensitivity are the pillars of his choreographic writing. His gestures are animated and precise. His work comes and goes between abstraction and figuration. Artist interview and more images.
ANNI LAAKSO is a sculptor living and working in Helsinki. In her artistic work she has occupied spaces by a transitory space which she has built using found materials. Her works are often large installations that shape space, or small dwellings that visitors can step into. In addition to the characteristics of the place, the works often have a unifying element of community members. The works create a space and a situation that is different from its surroundings and in which one can act differently. Anni Laakso’s works present, among other things, alternative experiences and tools for operating in a public space, and thus shaping it as a space shared by us all. Artist interview and more images.
PASCAL RENAULT, director, author and actor, living in Nice, France. As a co-artistic director of the dance theatre “Le Sixièmétage” (sixth floor) Pascal Renault offers hybrid creations, a theater of performed and danced images that draws its inspiration from the study of the different faces of humanity. Since 2001, Le Sixièmétage has been creating pieces for the stage, but also other forms (installations, strolls, etc.) intended for distribution outside the walls or public space. Artist interview and more images.
JUVANA SOLIVEN is a visual artist and educator from Honolulu, Hawaii. Soliven’s work subverts and utilizes object languages to speak to issues regarding intimacy, labor, bodily autonomy, human rights, and women’s positionality within the patriarchal system — resulting in amalgamate forms of the censored body, medical implement, weapon, adornment, and trap. The pixelated censor is used broadly in her work and is interrogated through the tedium of craft practices — beading, weaving, paper crafts, metalsmithing, enameling, sewing — as a meditation on labor and the endless work needed to fight for what is ours. Artist interview and more images.
AUGUST 2024
The press is talking about us:
Österbottens Tidning, August 18th, 2024
Österbottens Tidning, August 22th, 2024
Österbottens Tidning, August 22th, 2024
ROBERT BACK from Nykarleby in Finland, thinks that spaces are not empty spaces. Neither physically nor temporally. Existence does not consist of transport routes between events or voids between A and B, even though we humans easily tend to experience or even create such notions.The content of my work often moves in this limbo and then takes various forms of technique and/or expression. Artist interview and more images.
MATTHIAS BECKMANN, from Berlin, Germany became known for his extensive series of drawings of selected places and institutions. He has drawn, for example, in the German Bundestag, in the surgery, radiology and pathology departments of the Charité hospital in Berlin, in the Mercedes factory near Stuttgart, in a refugee centre and in numerous museums. Matthias Beckmann works without preparatory sketches, without photographic aids and without corrections. The theme of his drawings is the artist’s view of things and situations. Artist interview and more images.
SALLY KIDALL from Australia, travels internationally creating her vast site-responsive interventions in challenging locations and buildings of interest, showing beyond the restraints of the gallery. She explores metaphorical spaces and environments that engage with the anxieties and insecurities of our contemporary society. She endeavours to inspire and challenge a wider audience, evoking thoughts/questions and stimulating discussion. The majority of her works are temporary and built within natural and urban environments, incorporating virtual and narrative elements with video and sound. Artist interview and more images.
SACHIKO MIKI is a Japanese sculptor residing in Kanagawa, Japan. Her works resemble otherworldly anime characters, but she visually represents the inner essence of the human beings. Actually her sculptor career started with a question – what shape does a human have inside its appearance? She initially focused on what she believe existed within her outer shell, including negative features such as her own ignorance and being emotional in certain moments. Artist interview and more images.
HARRI PIISPANEN is visual & performance artist and producer from Helsinki, Finland. He works with a wide range of materials and mediums revolving his practice around making objects and using them in performance. The resulting object interactions are often performed both live as well as for video. The sculptural performance objects are often meant to be worn and as such are directly connected with the body – each is a shell covering the body or a part of it. These big and often cumbersome items become alive in performance, often in surprising and humorous ways. Artist interview and more images.
