Finnish exposition

Participation in Eksperimenta! is part of a wider national development project in contemporary art education in Finland. This development project includes over 4000 students in 12 art schools that focus on art education. From this group, anyone between the ages of 14 and 19 (over 1971 students) could take part in Eksperimenta! The art schools began their contemporary art education projects in the autumn of 2010 through numerous art workshops.

As the producer of the contemporary art education project and the curator of Eksperimenta! Finnish exposition I have visited each participating art school and explored the workshops, their contents and the final products. Through discussions with the participating teachers and supervising artists we have together decided which workshops could produce materials suitable for the exhibition. 16 workshops were chosen with the aim of participating in the Eksperimenta! exposition. The participants were chosen on the basis of sketches and ideas and as the work progressed, the works have been allowed to develop freely.

As the artworks have been produced in art schools as a part of their contemporary art curriculum and under the supervision of art teachers, it is often difficult to separate the student’s own expression from the given assignment. I have tried to identify the works that best express the student’s own vision, or works where the method of execution has left the most room for independent expression.

Due to the vast amount of available works, a rather large portion of works had to be excluded from the exhibition, lest it become impossibly large. However, the results of the Finnish art schools’ contemporary art project are well represented in the chosen works. They reflect their authors and convey their Finnish character through both the chosen materials and their topics.

The theme of the Eksperimenta! exposition is “Space”, which also translates in Finnish as “state”. Our national theme for the exhibition in Finland is therefore “Space – Mental State” (in Finnish: “TILA – Mielentiloja”). This gave us the opportunity to deal with those mental states that different physical spaces arouse in us. Different spaces welcome us in different ways and our behaviour in those spaces varies accordingly.

In choosing the works for the exhibition, we have also aimed at creating a body of works which, despite or because of the differences in schools and their geographical locations, would reveal something about the spaces or states – both physical and mental – of ourselves as Finns.

Juha Saari
Curator of Eksperimenta! Finnish exposition