Author: Satu Oksanen

Jouni S. Laiti, Pain of the Earth, 2018–19, birch burl, iron nail, antler, 5.7cm x 11cm x 12cm Finnish National Gallery / Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Pirje Mykkänen

Milk, Monosodium Glutamate, Chewing Gum and Dust – Lasting and Evanescent Material in Kiasma’s Collections

Satu Oksanen

Satu Oksanen, MA, Curator, Finnish National Gallery / Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma

Also published in Saara Hacklin, –Kati Kivinen and Satu Oksanen (eds.), The Many Forms of Contemporary Art. The Kiasma Collection Book. A Museum of Contemporary Art Publication 175/2022. Helsinki: Finnish National Gallery / Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, 2022. Transl. Maija Timonen

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Materials used in contemporary art are diverse, and often central to the meanings of the works. On the one hand the material of an artwork can be something tangible, on the other, a piece can take an immaterial form. The idea of a search for the new, questioning and reacting to the surrounding world, is inscribed into contemporary art. Challenging existing methods and trying out new materials in art demands of the museum a continual change in modes of operation. Museums must find new means of collecting, preserving and exhibiting art. New materials also propose new ways of experiencing art for the spectator.

The art collection of a museum is also a collection of materials. An enormous mass of matter has been accumulated in store rooms, an assembly of ageing bodies of artworks. Transience and the fragility of materials is nothing new in art, but the use of materials that are vulnerable to the ravages of time has increased in contemporary art. At different points in time attitudes towards materiality and its meanings have shifted. In Finland a significant change in the use of artistic materials occurred in the 1960s, when the use of new and alternative materials became common. The traditional materials of sculptures, such as wood, stone and bronze had to make way for polyurethane, perspex and fibreglass. Oil-based paints were traded in for acrylic.[1] . Digitality has been visible in art particularly since the end of the last millennium. In the 2000s ideas around new materialism shifted attention to the agency of materials.

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[1] Kirsti Harva. ‘Teosten toinen elämä. Vaikuttavuus konservaattorin näkökulmasta’, in Päivi Rajakari (ed.), Mitä meillä oli ennen Kiasmaa? Kokoelmatoiminnan vaikuttavuus. Helsinki: Valtion taidemuseo / KEHYS, 2008, 272.

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Featured image: Jouni S. Laiti, Pain of the Earth, 2018–19, birch burl, iron nail, antler, 5.7cm x 11cm x 12cm, Finnish National Gallery / Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma
Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Pirje Mykkänen

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paintings, book, plants) on the terrace of the Museum of Contemporary Art of Kiasma Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Pirje Mykkänen

Museum-as-Compost – Matter, Rhythms, and the Nonhuman

Satu Oksanen

Satu Oksanen, MA, Curator, Finnish National Gallery / Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, Helsinki

Also published in Saara Hacklin and Satu Oksanen (eds.), Yhteiseloa / Coexistence. Human, Animal and Nature in Kiasma’s Collections. A Museum of Contemporary Art Publication 166/2019. Helsinki: Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, Finnish National Gallery, 2019. Transl. Silja Kudel

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The reconciliation of divergent rhythms – that of a museum and non-human life – is a key issue raised by the display of Immigrant Garden[1], an installation by Kalle Hamm (b. 1969) and Dzamil Kamanger (b. 1948). The work comprises living plants that are governed by the rhythm of nature and conditions determined by the weather and climate. The work unfolds on the museum’s balcony at its own unhurried pace.

The living component in the installation challenges established conventions of displaying art in a museum. With rare exceptions, exhibition dates and museum schedules are carefully planned and locked in. Visiting hours are inflexible, and guided tours adhere to an agreed schedule. The museum is a hermetic space with its own self-regulated rhythm. The presence of plants, however, injects an element of autonomous will. When more-than-humans are brought into the mix, the exhibition of artworks is no longer solely dependent on artists, curators, conservators or technicians.

Posthuman theory renounces established hierarchies in favour of the egalitarian coexistence of all beings. Entrenched anthropocentric notions and habitual patterns of thought have been challenged by feminist theory, but also by postcolonial theorists and environmental activists. Little by little, the idea that plants and other non-human agencies exist solely for the purpose of sustaining human life has correspondingly been deconstructed. The philosopher and feminist theorist Rosi Braidotti argues that all species originate from ‘nature’ and are hence equal: humans are part of the material world just like non-humans. Braidotti uses the term zoe to define the vitality and energy that flows through all matter. Zoe is distinct from bios, which represents an anthropocentric viewpoint on life. Zoe thus offers a conceptual tool for subverting anthropocentrism and embracing interspecies equality.[2]

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[1] Immigrant Garden, by Kalle Hamm and Dzamil Kamanger, also includes 26 watercolour paintings of plants, a map, written texts and sound recordings of illustrated botanical samples. The plants in question are commonly assumed to be native Finnish species, but they all originate from different parts of the globe. This article focuses on the organic component of the installation and its relationship with the museum.

[2] Rosi Braidotti, ‘Four Theses on Posthuman Feminism’, in Richard Grusin (ed.), Anthropocene Feminism. Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2017, 21–35.

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Featured image: Kalle Hamm and Dzamil Kamanger, detail from Immigrant Garden, 2006-18, shown on the terrace of the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, plants (the complete art work includes paintings, book, plants). Finnish National Gallery / Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma
Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Pirje Mykkänen

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Alma Heikkilä, 2019

One Among Many. Alma Heikkilä’s Work for the Kiasma Commission by Kordelin

Satu Oksanen

Satu Oksanen, MA, Curator, Finnish National Gallery / Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, Helsinki

This is an edited version of Satu Oksanen’s article, ‘One Among Many’, in Satu Oksanen (ed.), Kiasma Commission by Kordelin: Alma Heikkilä. Nykytaiteen museon julkaisuja / A Museum of Contemporary Art Publication 165/2019. Helsinki: Finnish National Gallery / Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma 2019 (published April 2019). Transl. Silja Kudel

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Through painting, Alma Heikkilä (born 1984) strives to reach out to organisms that are undetectable by the human senses due to their microscopic size, or some other kind of inaccessibility – microbes, spores, algae, the interior debris of dead trees, or colonies of lichen growing inside a rock. Heikkilä alerts our senses to the tiniest, most invisible array of life forms that can usually be perceived only with the aid of devices like microscopes. In her paintings Heikkilä enlarges these organisms and their worlds to such an extreme, that they diminish the human viewer with their vast scale.

The surfaces and motifs of paintings provide habitats – bodies – for various life forms: sea, decaying wood, intestines and forest ecosystems. In turn they inhabit the space of the museum.

Heikkilä collaborates with various co-beings – scholars, artists, organisms and materials. She reflects on multi-species’ coexistence by fusing scientific knowledge with personal experience. Her approach is rhizome-like, pulling together multiform modes of thought, producing knowledge through dialogue, and allowing materials to interact spontaneously with each other, with ongoing back-and-forth movement between these domains.

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Featured image: Alma Heikkilä, installation view of the exhibition‘ , ’ /~` mediums,.’_ ” bodies,.’_ ” ° ∞  logs,∞ ‘ , ‘ /~` ‘ holes, .’ `-. ` .’ — °habitats / /`   ‘ * ‘-‘ . ’ , ’ /~`want to feel (,) you inside \| * . . * * \| * . . *./. .-. ~ .’ ‘ , ‘ /~` ❅ ☼ ~
Kiasma Commission by Kordelin, Kiasma’s Studio K Gallery, on view from 15 March – 27 July 2019. Finnish National Gallery / Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma
Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Petri Virtanen

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Alma Heikkilä: the Kiasma Commission by Kordelin, is open 15 March – 27 July 2019, at Kiasma’s Studio K Gallery, Helsinki