This issue compiles reflective texts on the social constructs around gender spectrum and identity; provides insights on how to make agreements and tackle different collaborations within the arts; asks what (and who) facilitates our physical and digital presence; examines the overlooked functions of belonging and networking provided by niche art schools and communities; all this with some sprinkles of comedic influences and death fantasies. Vidha Saumya, Riikka Kuoppala, Minjee Hwang Kim, Ksenia Kaverina, Roxana Sadvokassova, and Juha Hilpas are among the contributors to this issue.
If art has the bandwidth to hold our rejections, emotions, identities, anxiety and insecurities, what kind of an art scene does that make for those who manage the double shift of the immigrant and the professional?
READEditorial / May 2021
Burning out led to a long process of defining sustainable practices, learning to say no and, from time to time, relapsing. Now that I have made the decision to say that I don’t make art, I would love to share a few insights about how to make agreements and tackle different collaborations within the arts.
READConfessions of a recovering Artist
Artist and lawyer-to-be, Riikka Kuoppala’s insights on how to make agreements and tackle different collaborations within the arts.
I am the type of person who needs names and distinction in characteristics to comprehend whatever is happening in my world. I often blame it on growing up as a middle child in an immigrant family: the constant and urgent need to discern and explain what is mine and not. I am Minjee. I am Korean. I am a woman. Where are you from? What is your pronoun? What do I call you?
READWhat Do I Call You?
Minjee Hwang Kim on labelling and categorization of people, the power of assimilation, and the denial of structural oppression stretching into the model minority myth for Asians in the West.
To write this review in a post isolationist time, it actually took me three trips to get my head around the exhibition, the feel of the island, the spring, and the memories. Especially after coming across a rumor that the independence of Taidekoulu MAA and other private institutions like it are being threatened by cuts in funding. This review is a description of my trail through the exhibition, followed by ruminations on the situation that MAA is facing, based on a chat I had with MAA’s current principal, Minna Henriksson.
READFrom Memories Through the Soil to the Future
Juha Hilpas foregrounds a review of Art School MAA’s exhibition to talk about the school’s importance in nurturing a sense of belonging and networking.
It is productive to imagine commoning as a digital network, where, unlike with embodied presence, it’s impossible to be simultaneously present and absent – you are either online or not.
READProducing and Practicing Presence. Digital Commoning Practices in Oksasenkatu 11.
“Digital Commoning Practices asks us to pay increased attention to what (and who) facilitates our physical and digital presence while we can.”
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
On daily routine, power dynamics, struggles, resistance, attitudes, and structures.
Perhaps what makes me who I am is not only the things I have now but also the things I have lost or I long for.
READPlaces
Losing her podcast virginity to NO NIIN magazine, in her pristine-falling-short-of-ASMR-voice, Roxana zig-zags drawing an apoplectic line between her comedic influences, her underwear & death fantasies, and solid advice given to Karl Lagerfeld by his mother. 17 minutes, with a singular goal: to understand how the hell did she end up being a half-baked comedian?
READGross & Melancholic
17 minutes podcast, with a singular goal: to understand how the hell did Roxana Sadvokassova end up being a half-baked comedian?
