Cover photo: The Alvar Aalto Pavilion of Finland. Photo by Ugo Carmeni. Courtesy Frame Contemporary Art Finland.
The Pavilion of Finland at the Biennale Arte 2024 is commissioned by Frame Contemporary Art Finland, 20 April – 24 November 2024, frame finland.fi.
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This year the 60th International Art Exhibition, titled Stranieri Ovunque – Foreigners Everywhere, will open to the public from Saturday April 20 to Sunday November 24, 2024, at the Giardini and the Arsenale; it will be curated by Brasilian curator Adriano Pedrosa.
Stranieri Ovunque – Foreigners Everywhere, the title of the 60th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, is drawn from a series of works started in 2004 by the Paris-born and Palermo-based known Claire Fontaine collective. The works consist of neon sculptures in different colours that render in a growing number of languages the words “Foreigners Everywhere”. The phrase comes, in turn, from the name of a Turin collective that fought racism and xenophobia in Italy in the early 2000s.
The Exhibition will also include eighty eight National Participations in the historic Pavilions at the Giardini, at the Arsenale and in the city of Venice. In this incredible constellations of solid exhibition, Boemio realized a conversation with artists of the Finland Pavilion.
The pleasures we choose is a choral collaboration by artists Pia Lindman, Vidha Saumya, Jenni–Juulia Wallinheimo–Heimonen, curators Yvonne Billimore and Jussi Koitela, and architectural designer Kaisa Sööt. Commissioned and produced by Frame Contemporary Art Finland, it premieres at the Pavilion of Finland at the 60th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia.
Blurring the boundaries between art, architecture, and social commentary, the Pavilion of Finland brings together three artists for whom art, life, and activism are intertwined. Embraced as a collective project, The pleasures we choose evolved through the exchange of shared and individual experiences to create areas of diverse ‘occupancies’ where visitors are encouraged to reassess and (re)consider societal expectations. Boemio spoke at length with the artists, developing a conversation centered around the seven questions outlined below. The stimulating transcript of the conversation can be found in Part II of this article in the Out of Bounds section of this issue, an in-depth interview with Pia Lindman, Jenni-Juulia Wallinheimo-Heimonen, and Vidha Saumya.
- How can we celebrate the pleasure of the personal as a powerful means of reimagining the world as we know it? Which materials and processes have you used to realize these cosmologies?
- Which different environments and social situations have you explored?
- As the curators explained in their curatorial text on ‘The pleasures we choose’, it is a myth that the artist is separate from the world, on the contrary, art and life is both inseparable and intertwined. Artists can give an important contribution to society; indeed, I always try to apply this holistic approach into my own practice and projects. Can you tell me how you align both art and activism in your work?
- In reference to the last question, do you think your practice has wider impact?
- What does it mean for you all to work together?
- How do you explore serious subject matters which relate to your own individual experiences whilst focusing on pleasure and conveying powerful messages to audiences?
- What is “access architecture” as defined by the exhibition?
Artists
Pia Lindman explores the world of the subsensorial. After being poisoned by Mercury, her nervous system became sensitized to micro-signals from within her body. These signals she transforms into images, melodies, words, and colors, allowing her to tune into atmospheres, toxicities and materiality in different spatial and social conditions. She has exhibited at the 32nd São Paulo Biennial, MoMA, MoMA PS1 and HKW in Berlin and was a fellow at Center for Advanced Visual Studies, MIT (2004–2007).
Vidha Saumya’s practice weaves together notions of exile and utopia, questioning the normatives of aesthetics and socio-political ecologies. Through acrid humour, haptic textures, and arduous workwomanship, her poems, drawings, photographs, videos, books, embroidery, sculptures, culinary interventions, and digital artefacts are at once accessible and intensely challenging. She is co-founder and co-editor of NO NIIN Magazine and a founding member of Museum of Impossible Forms.
Jenni–Juulia Wallinheimo–Heimonen is a multidisciplinary artist and disability activist whose work spans sculpture, video, performance and activism within disability politics and policy. Her works deal with structural violence and discrimination framed as kindness, and issues related to women with disabilities. Wallinheimo-Heimonen has facilitated social art workshops and participated in exhibitions in Finland and abroad. She received the Finnish State Prize for Multidisciplinary Art in 2019.
Camilla Boemio is an internationally published author, curator, and member of the AICA (International Arts Critics) and IKT (International), based in Rome. In 2013, Boemio was the co-associate curator of PORTABLE NATION: Disappearance as Work in Progress – Approaches to Ecological Romanticism, the Maldives Pavilion at the 55th International Art Exhibition La Biennale di Venezia. In 2016, Boemio curated Diminished Capacity, the first Nigerian Pavilion at the 15th International Architecture Exhibition La Biennale di Venezia. Boemio’s recent curatorial projects include her role as co-associate curator at Pera+Flora+Fauna.TheStoryofIndigenousnessandTheOwnershipofHistory, supported by Port Perak in Malasya, an official collateral event at the 59th International art exhibition La Biennale di Venezia, 2022; Zoè Gruni: Matherwood curated at Galleria Il Ponte, 2023; and Stefano Cagol: TheBouvetIsland co-curated at ETRU Museo Nazionale Etrusco in Roma, 2024
