Artists

Anna-Kaisa Ant-Wuorinen

Anna-Kaisa Ant-Wuorinen (b 1957) is a sculptor from Somero, West-Finland. Ant-Wuorinen takes photographs and makes video art. She uses industrially produced everyday items as material for her sculptures and environmental art.

Andy Best & Merja Puustinen

Andy Best & Merja Puustinen are visual and media artists, specialising in playful and provocative interactions in physical spaces such as galleries and museums, as well as in the urban space. Their work is powerful, provocative and often tackles social and political themes in playful, physical ways. They use many different materials, techniques and technologies to realise their ideas.

Andy Best is lecturer in sculpture and Head of the Center for General Studies at Aalto University. Merja Puustinen is Executive Director of the Union of Finnish Art Associations, as well as a PhD researcher at the University of the Arts, Helsinki.

Denise Ziegler

Denise Ziegler  is an artist and a researcher of public space born in Switzerland. She has graduated as master of Arts from Academy of Fine Arts, Helsinki in 1997 and made her doctoral dissertation in 2010. In her postdoctoral research in Aalto University Levels of Elevation – the Sublime Experience as a Method to Address Public Space, Ziegler developed a new method for understanding urban space through experimental interventions.

Forest Camp

Artist group Forest Camp was formed in 1998 in Punkaharju, Finland. Artistic strength of Forest Camp is the free juggling of ideas which draws from connections between mundane life and art. The group’s production consists of interventions, site-specific installations together with artworks and events that probe the essence of art. Forest Camp is known specifically for the Kakutus interventions that have taken place in Mohni island, Jurmala, Punkaharju, Madrid, Acciarole, New York and Cheng Chau island.

Le Hien Minh

Le Hien Minh (b. 1979, Hanoi, Vietnam) is known to persistently employ a Vietnamese traditional handmade paper called Dó, with which she constructs large scale installations. In her work, Dó paper is visibly vulnerable to the effects of weathering and human treatment. Materiality, whether on the point of dematerialization or materialization, is central. It is a manifestation of an idea that all things are impermanent.

Additionally, Le Hien Minh’s work acts as a bridge between contemporary and traditional Vietnamese art and also between modern and historical Vietnamese culture. She studied traditional Lacquer at the Ho Chi Minh City University of Fine Art and acquired a degree in Fine Art from the Art Academy of Cincinnati, USA. Her works have been exhibited in major museums and galleries in Vietnam as well as in Korea, Taiwan, and the USA since 2003. Le Hien Minh currently lives and works in Ho Chi Minh City.

Pagan

Pagan is a cross-disciplinary collective of creatives with a background in technology, film, interaction design and game design. Currently they are exploring interactive media to make unique participatory installations in public space. Pagan are fundamentally connected by the joy of experimentation and make-believe. Pagan are Daniel Blackburn, Lisa Roberts and Tuomo Tammenpää from Kemiö, Finland.

Pia Sirén

Pia Sirén (b. 1982) is an artist who specializes in large scale installations made of construction materials. In her works, scaffolding and tarpaulins form nature and landscapes; mountains, vegetation and forests. The works create artificial nature and temporary do-it-yourself landscapes. Sirén is interested in the physical and mental constructions surrounding landscapes, creating immersive spatial experiences, and the creative misuse of materials.

Riikka Puronen

For Riikka Puronen the core ideas of sculpting are thinking, physicality and sensuality that a sculpture can mediate to the viewer. Materials and scale of sculptures vary depending on the idea and the work at hand. The materials also gain new meanings. Bronze for example, has more recently become a recyclable material as well as being a traditional and valuable material for sculpting.

Shoji Kato

Shoji Kato’s art explores how humans make and sustain spaces. In his artistic research thesis, Place of Geometry (2015), Kato analysed the correlation between visions, concepts, actions, materials, technology and temporality using geometric models. His works have been exhibited internationally and deposited in many private collections.

Shoji Kato was born in Japan, has lived in Japan and the U.S. and currently lives and works in Helsinki. He studied at the State University of New York – Purchase College, the Academy of Fine Arts (Amsterdam) and the Academy of Fine Arts, Helsinki.

Timo Heino

Sculptor Timo Heino (b. 1962) lives and works in Helsinki, Finland. A central theme in his art is investigating the material world. His focus is on the history, identity and circulation of matter, and on the ways the symbolic meaning and people’s relationship to various substances have changed in different eras. In addition to the metaphoric and artistic dimensions, the concept of matter is important to him through its social and political meanings. Heino graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts, Helsinki, in 1989. He received his doctoral degree in fine arts in 2016.