What does visual art mean to you?
3-channel HD-video
Color & sound
Duration: ~30 min / loop
Language: Finnish / English subtitles
Filming location: Ateneum collection exhibition A Question of Time
Technical implementation: Alain Ryckelynck
Camera assistants: Rabbe Sandström and Antti Poteri
English subtitles: Kasper Salonen
Special tanks to all who participated in the artwork process: interviewees, models and helpers!
The supporters of the artwork: The Arts Promotion Centre Finland (Taike), Paulo Foundation, Mänttä Art Festival and Ateneum Art Museum
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Color & sound
Duration: ~30 min / loop
Language: Finnish / English subtitles
Filming location: Ateneum collection exhibition A Question of Time
Technical implementation: Alain Ryckelynck
Camera assistants: Rabbe Sandström and Antti Poteri
English subtitles: Kasper Salonen
Special tanks to all who participated in the artwork process: interviewees, models and helpers!
The supporters of the artwork: The Arts Promotion Centre Finland (Taike), Paulo Foundation, Mänttä Art Festival and Ateneum Art Museum
Stills from the video piece What does visual art mean to you?, 2023. Photo: ©Iiri Poteri
Sorry, hi, I’m working on a piece about what visual art means to people. Would you have a moment to answer a few questions?
The video piece What does visual art mean to you? is based on interviews that I carried in Helsinki and Mänttä in 2022, in which I asked people on the street and professional artists questions about visual arts in order to examine their experiences of art and its meaning. In the final piece, these interviews intertwine into the contemplation of visual arts and the values related to its creation, and visitors can use it as a basis for reflection on their own ideas of art.
Installation view of What does visual art mean to you? in the exhibition opening of Out of Nowhere, Mänttä Art Festival, 2023, curated by Minna Suoniemi and Petri Ala-Maunus, Mänttä-Vilppula (FI). Art pieces in the background (left to right): Angels Femcels and Demigods by Emma Ainala and Bodccast della verità by Max Hannus & Elina Nissinen. Photo: ©Iiri Poteri.
The idea for the installation originated from my childhood memory of seeing Eero Järnefelt’s painting “Under the Yoke/Burning the Brushwood” (1893) during a school trip to the Ateneum Art Museum. When I walked past the painting, the eyes of one of its characters, a child of my own age, seemed to follow me. “What does visual art mean to you?” stemmed from a need to discover once more that feeling of wonder that I experienced as a child.
Installation view of What does visual art mean to you? in the exhibition Out of Nowhere, Mänttä Art Festival, 10.6.–31.8.2023, curated by Minna Suoniemi and Petri Ala-Maunus, Mänttä-Vilppula (FI). Photo: Iiri Poteri.
Visitors to the Mänttä Art Festival will also have the opportunity to answer questions about visual arts during the exhibition Out of Nowhere 10.6.–31.8.2023.