InterViews
Hiwa is interested in research, participatory working, and collective action, but he is also interested in making it, for lack of a better word, fun. Previously written texts and press articles on Hiwa have called him an “extellectual”, someone who gains knowledge from ‘the streets’, through conversations and the exchange of books. Despite the risk of repeating pre-published information, I find it critically important for the sake of reading the following interview to point out that the qualities of humour and satire—to neither take oneself too seriously nor wallow in the miseries of the world—occupy a central position in Hiwa’s work.
READOn Recognising the Moment of Hope: Speaking in Echoes With HIWA K.
The fifteen-minute-long film did not give me a chance to blink; I could not stop thinking about its dreamlike atmosphere that traveled back and forth between the present and past moments through the familial archives and present-time footage. Paola’s attempt to reconstruct her past in relation to her current search for answers as to why she is thousands of kilometers away from her family captivated me. What you’re reading is an exchange between Paola and me in which we try to understand her working processes and inspirations for creating this work in greater depth.
READMommy, Say Something to the Camera: A Conversation with Paola Fernanda Guzmán Figueroa
I began using fabric within my fine art practice in 2015. However, I have been immersed in textiles my whole life, and my mother is undoubtedly the main inspirational force behind this incredible experience. Our house was always full of fabrics: curtains, mattresses, sheets, and many of my mother’s Chador Namazes (prayer veils). As children, my brother and I often made a big tent in our bedroom out of my mother’s chador that almost occupied the entire room. I was excited to experience a different space between the wrinkles of the fabric, as if entering another world. What surreal joy to lie down on the carpets and stare at the floral chador ceiling.
READWeaving Connections in the Flow: A Conversation with Leila Seyedzadeh
Sonia Boyce is a pioneer of the British Black Art movement. Her practice stems from the visual arts but has grown in so many directions that categorizing her work into any single art form feels oversimplifying. Then again, that is partly the nature of Black Art: the need and ability to be multiple things and escape definition simultaneously. Sonia and I are from different generations; we work with distinct art forms in different contexts and very different parts of Europe. Despite these differences, we almost immediately find a common language. In our discussion, we define it as the language of blackness. Working as a black man in northern Finland, it is a rare opportunity to have a tête-a-tête with my elders. It can even be hard to recognize my elders. Sonia called it systemic amnesia, how our environments erase our lineages and make us think we are alone.
READDreaming Utopias Into Existence: A Conversation With Sonia Boyce
Sympathetic resonance in music is the reactionary sonar vibration in an object caused by the vibrations of a different object: It is like the awakening of a note in something that is not actively made to sound. When I see the newest paintings by Aishe Vejdani, this is what I feel. The visual resonance sounds a similar chord in my retina, and I feel emotional waves ripple through me.I am intrigued by how the paintings look, both ancient and new. These works reference Aishe’s ancestral past, including the hardship of her forefathers.
READFrom Memory to Memorial: A Conversation With Aishe Vejdani
Today most Dalits are first or second-generation learners who are still trying to assert their existence and improve their societal position. In doing so, they prioritise safety and financial security and often enter fields tried and tested by their parents or other Dalit community members – they do not have the privilege of “choosing” versatile careers like art or filmmaking. Moreover, there is limited access and almost no exposure to the process of entering these industries. Even though Art is a storytelling medium that can bring about change, it is arduous and challenging for Dalit Bahujan filmmakers to publish their stories in a gate-kept caste society. Telling a story itself is the Art that propels change. Still, the question remains, how to break through the caste-based gatekeeping and works towards building a Dalit and Bahujan discourse of filmmaking and documenting?
READStories of Resistance: a conversation with filmmakers Omey Anand and Jyoti Nisha
The following interview is an intimate and vulnerable dialogue between distant friends: Naomi Joshi and Vivetha Thambinathan, back in 2020. When we finally spoke, to my surprise, an organic friendship was born as words were exchanged, from similarities and differences in our experiences to statements of solidarity, acknowledgements of pain, and an unwavering fight for healing and care. Vivetha opened her heart to me, and I feel grateful to share her unbelievably eloquent voice.
READOn (the lack of) Diversity in Academia: a Conversation with Vivetha Thambinathan
A significant decision in my career was to abandon gallery-based work and pursue my own interests. I began creating pieces independently without telling anyone when I was supposed to complete them or where they would end up. I found creative ways of showing the works; I performed in public spaces or at different events, often filmed those and uploaded them online. I also started to tell other people’s stories, so the video was an excellent format for that, and it started almost accidentally. This was a tremendous professional change for me, and I have continued working that way more or less until now.
READAccessibility is not static: A Conversation with Jenni-Juulia Wallinheimo-Heimonen
One has to be respectful towards someone willing to tell their story and not impose one’s own opinions and views when someone’s ready to open up their wounds. Respect for the human, the situation and the story is everything. This is common sense.
READWorry and Play: A Conversation With Kristiina ‘Tikke’ Tuura
The images are familiar, quotidian and easily accessible. They do not say that there is violence in the background. Only the exhibition text reveals it. I think those pieces without text would be the most useless and boring. Wouldn’t it be the most boring thing to copy your childhood images while painting? A lovely picture is not enough for me.
READOne Last Exhibition: A Conversation With Sanni Seppä
But then I stop and think: Am I just going towards this boring kind of “business”? Is it a trap? There’s so much liberty at the moment. That’s something I appreciate. But how do I continue? I haven’t solved that yet, but I’d love to. In a way, it’s fine if it’s not me who runs it, it could even change its name from TTB to something else. Whatever! I just want there to be a space for specific books. And space to make new events and continue experimenting with books – around what they are and what they can be.
READThe Book as an Art Practice: A Conversation with Hikari Nishida
All small things matter because they evaluate our thinking, and trivial things can be seen as passages to bigger ones. Art can easily be seen as an ineffective way of changing the world, but I think there is this common memory, or heritage, in art, which acts like roots. Art comes from lived life, from the things we have seen, felt, heard, or explored.
READPaintings about decaying and growth: A Conversation with Sirkku Rosi
I don’t expect the viewer to take in everything in the painting at one glance. There are many possible storylines, and you can also read the painting in different directions. It’s not necessary to proceed in a linear fashion—you can go back at any time.
READPlayful personification of death: A Conversation with Melina Paakkonen
Like a well-functioning infrastructure, producing is an invisible labour of care, resourcefulness, and passion for the project at hand. There’s a lot of work behind the scenes, and often the producer is the last to be acknowledged. Few people in the cultural sector are as industrious yet deeply affectionate as Lisa Kalkowski. Lisa is one of the few people whose interest in the projects she’s producing is as important as the project’s ethics. She has a penchant for learning languages, is a dance enthusiast, a problem solver, and a stress-diffuser.
READOn Working with Friction and Confrontation: Conversation with Lisa Kalkowski
I try to balance my practice between what I think is important to discuss politically and what feels enjoyable for me in life. The topics I end up making films about are those that combine these two things. I think I’m good at describing something by bringing together images, sounds, and words.
READ“Most of the time, it’s just a wonderful thing”: conversation with August Joensalo
House of Fvck is a Drag collective born in 2020 during the Helsinki Pride Week. It was a project for Nuorten Pride to teach young people under 18 to do Drag with makeup, costume and performance; the tutors were Chris Oh! and Betty Fvck.
READNo Shade: Betty Fvck & the House of Betty Fvck
I am interested in language. I question language. I often feel that naming things too clearly, opening them up as if they were on an operating table, does not speak about the things I am trying to reach, but puts them in certain categories, forced within a certain structure that is not my language. It feels like a violent act.
READCountering Cohesive Narratives: Conversation with Azar Saiyar
Even though we met for the first time, Rita was keen on opening up to talk about a variety of subjects. We talked about many things, stopping longer on the role of Renaissance in Rita’s current art practice, her PhD on artists-in-residence, the latest exhibition in Myymälä 2 and the invisibility of foreign artists in Finland.
READA fragment of a landscape, an iceberg, or something else entirely: Conversation with Rita Vargas
On the eve of the day view of Deep Time Trans (DTT), the latest project by the DTT working group, I sat with two members of this collective of artists to discuss queer ecology, queer futures, and transformation.
READDeep Time Trans, a Lookinglass into Prehistoric Queer Ecology: Conversation with Even Minn and Teo Ala-Ruona
I’m so tired of seeing depressing African films about slavery and civil wars; about suffering. And though I wanted to address an issue like the health crisis in Africa, I wanted to tell it through love.
READKhadar Ahmed: The King of "No"
The way I learned to connect with Kaffeochbulla was mainly through art and usually in a very straightforward manner. They would hand me zines, prints, stickers, earrings or clothes upon meeting, and always ask what I’ve been doing or experimenting with. It has always felt vulnerable in a nice way and that these exchanges of art, thoughts and treasures weave little webs of support and excitement for one another.
READMagic, Intergenerational trauma & Snail Shells: Conversation with KaffeochBulla
It’s easy to remember when I met Eleni Tsitsirikou. It was on the day of my arrival from Berlin to Helsinki for my curatorial residency at HIAP. On Wednesday, 1 November 2017, I felt nervous looking for the entrance of Kaapeli, the Cable Factory. But there was Eleni waiting for me with a welcoming smile. Since then, throughout the residency, she was the person that I could turn to, making me feel at home. If there is a heart to an organisation, it would be Eleni for HIAP.
READMoment of Welcoming: Conversation with Eleni Tsitsirikou
Ubuntu Film Club (Alice Mutoni, Rewina Teklai, Fiona Musanga) in conversation with Good Hair Day (Saida Mäki-Penttilä, Paloma Sandberg, Akunna Onwen) about why community-based organisations are needed?
READWhy are community-based organisations needed?
I still remember the first time I saw Kihwa-Endale artwork in her studio. She was painting on transparent surfaces and mirrors. The paintings were getting alive, reflecting the light, the space around it and showing you your own reflection. Kihwa-Endale explained that the artworks were meant to portray multiple realities coexisting and play with the viewer.
READContinuance between Art, Art-Space and Audience: conversation with Kihwa-Endale
This interview is a transcription from a recorded verbal dialogue that happened on a balcony while five other friends were eating, listening to music and dancing in the other room. In this transcription we wished to communicate the feeling of thinking through talking as it happens in real dialogues, holding a glass of red wine, sensing on our faces the fragrant sting of summer wind, on a late evening.
READCurating from the perspective of an artist: conversation with Anna Ruth
Craftsmanship that leaves a polished finishing and evocative historical notions hidden underneath the fine details. Man Yau’s work with ceramic installations arrests the viewer, while encouraging to revisit and contemplate the uncanny contemporaneity that the artworks embody. In this interview, we discuss artistic processes, practices and labour as well as the intertwining of the personal and the thematic in Yau’s two exhibitions from the spring 2021: M.Y. Chinoiserie at Kuvan Kevät, Exhibition Laboratory, and Dried flowers last forever at Boy Konsthall.
READOn “The feeling of being on display and under pressure” — a conversation with Man Yau
I leave my bike on the side of the market square next to the pier where the ferry to Suomenlinna island goes. I look around, trying to spot Corinna; we have never met before. My first impressions of her base on our exchange of emails, a delicate mind-map she shared with me, and on what I know of her work. Corinna arrives with a light pushchair and a lively child in a baby carrier against her chest. They have come to Helsinki before heading to the archipelago, and we have decided to take a walk in Suomenlinna. It would be easier to talk while moving since the young, involuntary participant might get restless with no action around.
READOn Soft Alphabets and the Hues of an Inside: An Interview with Corinna Helenelund
As soon as I sit in the front seat of the car the size of a herring tin, I understand where the opulent descriptions of Hertta are coming from. Her joy, warmth, and charisma tangle around me and fill the insides of the tiny Fiat.
READMixing everything with everything in everything — an interview with Hertta Kiiski
I had just visited Noora’s latest exhibition Still Struggling at The Platform Gallery. Noora’s art probes the absurdities of everyday life: plain for everyone to see, but easy to miss. It also immerses, engulfs. It addresses the usually overlooked, but unavoidable, vital.
READMovement and Resistance: an interview with Noora Geagea
I guess this need for touch is so present now, It’s something I noticed not only in my work but all around. And when I’m producing [new work] I wanted to give this feeling of tangible fingers or tongues, this feeling of touch.
READFinding Forms to Recognise Warmth: a conversation with Bogna Luiza Wisniewska
I don’t believe in inspiration. I go to the studio all the time and I might sit there and read my phone if I don’t do anything, but I need to get there. Mostly even if you think nothing will happen there, you might just catch the most essential small idea that you start to develop.
READA Long Line of Characters: Getting to Know the Life and Work of Kirsti Tuokko
I feel there’s nothing to do for me but to constantly make and create more spaces. It is like drilling through existing hard shelled spaces, cemented in their ways.
READTo follow a Ball of Yarn: a conversation with Shubhangi Singh
