Risako Yamanoi, Places, 2021, watercolor, gouache, colored pencils, and graphite on paper
Risako Yamanoi is a visual artist based in Helsinki. She has completed her master’s degree at the Academy of Fine Arts, University of the Arts Helsinki. Her work explores personal feelings and memories which remain unseen and marginal in everyday life.
To create the work, I thought about the choices I made, and about how those choices affected my identity. Then I started thinking that the things I did not choose or I have not got yet could be equally important as the choices I made. 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. It feels somehow natural to me to think that way.
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READIn this project, 100 letters were sent to the friends, relatives and acquaintances of the organizing team. The letter described how much we missed their hugs, which had been withheld for a year due to COVID. The addressees were asked to send us an item of clothing that was old, worn out, and had seen its last days in their closet.
An Equivalence of Our Distance
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READI did the work improvising it along the way during spring and summer 2021. The picture resembles a message or a notice board. There are small bits of drawing/painting/text done on a piece of paper that I had with me for some months in my backpack. I liked the idea that the image and the paper have aged - that the passing of time has left its marks on the work.
It is Only the End of the World
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READI am fascinated by memories from my childhood in the ’90s. I remember that there were posters around Finland back then (and later on), attached to various places by some religious groups. The posters said in bold capital letters “JESUS IS COMING ARE YOU READY” written in Finnish.
Vulnerability is coming
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READThe Finding of Hän is an original puppet theater production that explores the inherent duality of human nature and imagines the lifespan of an ancient object. Themes and characters are drawn from coastal cultures and stories from around the world.
The Finding of Hän