ART
/FOR
/ALL

Art For All Festival 2023 took place in the Kalasatama neighborhood in Helsinki, filling the everyday environments with art. The event presented emerging artists from different disciplines going from performances, to food art and textile works.

The 2023 edition of the festival revolved around the theme Invitation. The festival reflected on the meaning of home and the social interactions related to everyday environments. It explored the urban space of Kalasatama as a place of complex relationships to our surroundings, neighbors, plants, and others. The theme evolved in contact with the Kalasatama area, its inhabitants, and the artists during the Residency and workshops. The works invited the public to participate in various performances, to meet the artists over shared meals and teas, and to follow the stories of those encounters. The artists’ did research on and thought about the role and importance of home; a clean and intimate space, its colours and tastes. They took a closer look at the concept of ownership and human interactions within and outside that space. Sometimes it is absent and even considered a wasteland. The selected artists explore the theme through multidisciplinary installations, growing and living artworks, dance, music, sound, participatory and site specific performances and textile pieces.

The festival was preceded by a week-long “neighborhood residency” where the artists build up their work in a cross-artistic environment and interact with the local residents. During the residency the artists will discuss the themes with researchers from various fields as well as with veteran artists from the Artist House Ars Longa.


The festival was a mix between an open doors day, a block party and a gathering among neighbors and strangers. The event was organized in collaboration with HEKA Oy, Setlementtiasunnot, NAL-asunnot and the Artist House Ars Longa. The festival has been planned together with the local residents who opened their semi-private everyday environments for visitors to experience.

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2023, dance, spoken word, music and digital sound design

Elham is a modern dance piece that tells a story of poverty, exclusion and womanhood in Finnish society.

It explores the cycles that emerge in a life of material scarcity. What does deficiency feel like on our skin? Who are we when we have nothing? The choreography of the piece presents intangible phases that incarcerate the self when basic necessities are not met. It contemplates the boundaries that need to be broken so that the light of the thing we call “normal” can shed in.

As growth is an intrinsic part of human life, the piece is about detaching from those vicious patterns of survival by admitting how dependent we are on other people.

Kulminaatio is an art collective based in Helsinki. The collective consists of multidisciplinary artists from modern dance, music, digital sound design, costume design and visual arts backgrounds.

Their first production Sokea Piste was performed in Espoo in August 2021 and second one, Emma & Elham in Helsinki in June 2022. Kulminaatio takes initiative to shed light on the blind spots of today’s society. For their work on using artistic methods to create dialogue they have been nominated for the Finnish Act for Dialogue 2022 -award and Ashoka Nordic’s Young Changemaker of the Year -programme.

2023, visuals, soundscape, and mixed media installation

This work reflects on patterns of behavior in intimate, public, and liminal spaces in relation to the fast urbanization and the appearance of categorically defined places in the cityscape. By observing ways of being in various spaces we explore the notion of home as well as the forms we create home-ness outside the private, privatized, and defined spaces we inhabit. In wastelands, we find home, by finding comfort in the undefined and acknowledging the openness for a collective of stories to happen.

The installation seeks to open up questions about the over-expanding urbanization and its effects on the ways of being within the structured - mostly imposed - narratives that come with the development of defined spaces. Driven by the in-between spaces the project invites the audience to inhabit the installation, exploring it as a landscape, interacting and rearranging it to open up the possibilities of being in the space beyond transitory roles.

Francesca Bogani Amadori (Lima, 1990) is an interdisciplinary artist based in Helsinki. Their work revolves around power dynamics and the shifting identities and agencies within them. Through mapping, walking, and active listening practice they delve into memory, embodied knowledge, and non-linear experience(s) to promote multiple narratives and other forms of knowledge production. Their work unfolds in the form of audiovisual installations, performances, soundscapes, sound maps, and different forms of texts. Currently, they are finishing their MA studies in New Media at Aalto University.

Henry Lämsä (Finland, 1987) is a designer and media artist currently based in Helsinki. He works with themes like identity, consciousness, borders (geographical and metaphorical), and all the ways humans define and control nature and its resources. He has a BA in Cinematography and is currently finishing his MA studies in New Media Design at Aalto University.

2023, Mixed media installation and performance

Through a daily practice of dyeing fabric with natural materials, the artist unveils hidden colours from Otaniemi that transcend beyond sight.

She would like to invite participants to a tea party where she serves wild herbal teas sourced from Otaniemi. By manifesting landscapes in the form of the teas, she seeks to establish a profound connection between her body and the surrounding environment. You are welcome to join this multisensory moment to recreate and explore anew the landscape within yourself.

Can colours be experienced even in darkness or with closed eyes? What hues and melodies can you hear from this tea house?

Nagisa Mizuno is an interdisciplinary artist from Japan. She is pursuing her MFA in the Global Art Practice programme at Tokyo University of the Arts, and is currently studying at Aalto University as an exchange programme. After majoring in International Development for her BA and working as a coordinator for international security issues at the Ministry of Defense in Japan, Mizuno changed her focus to more interpersonal issues. Her work incorporates an act of eating food to probe the ways in which we care about ourselves, others, and the surrounding environment. Through her art practice, she aims to create intertwined spaces of ‘fermentation’ in a playful way.

2023, 3D-printed food, fungus

A collaboration between 3 different actors: Human, Fungi and Computer. Each one has re-processed the product without having pure control over it.
This landscape of alien familiarites started by human-made 3d objects which were then interpreted by a food 3d printer. The human then arranged the prints and left them alone. This is when the fungi took over, processing what the computer, machine and human had created, and made it it’s home.

One might look at this piece with a disgust that reminds us of that forgotten apple in the corner of a kitchen. But, if we try to look at the fungi expanding over these structures in this different context one might find curiosity and beauty. The artist invites you to inspire yourself with this landscape and think what kind of world it would be.

Zina Marpegan is an Argentinian artist and designer based in Finland. Often working with the complexity/simplicity of contradicting emotions in varying formats. They are currently finishing their Bachelor’s of Design at Aalto university and pursuing a Master’s in Visual Communication Design at the same institution.

2023, interactive performance

Cleaning a person's home is a kind of dialogue between the cleaner and the customer. While cleaning seniors' homes, I have strongly experienced how company and conversation are almost more important than cleaning. Cleaning has thus this spiritual side, which I have highlighted in my previous artistic performances related to cleaning.

My artwork in Kalasatama is a process in which I set up an office for a small cleaning firm, offering home cleaning to customers living in Kalasatama. I first receive customers and interview them about their cleaning needs and what they think about their home. 3 homes will be drawn from among the applicants, they will receive a real home cleaning from me for free. After all, I'm also a professional cleaner, and I've done private cleaning for many years in very different homes.

I ask the client what they think about having someone come clean for them right away. For example, does the customer feel the need to go and tidy up a bit first, so that the cleaner can come? Is someone ashamed of their home and if they are why?


Leena Pylkkö is a visual and performance artist based in the small archipelago municipality of Taivassalo. She studied sculpture in the Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki and graduated with a Diplom from the Freie Kunst from the Muthesius Academy of Fine Arts in Germany. She has held numerous solo exhibitions with her naivistic clay figures and participated in many art events with performances related to cleaning.

2023, site-specific performance

In "The Home is Where I Step My Toe," I plan to research and explore different ways to turn a randomly selected place into a home. A place is a spot in the world to which humans assign meaning. I’m asking what happens if we give a randomly selected outdoor place the meaning of home?

I create a site-specific performance that takes shape through process-based working methods. I incorporate bodily practice methods and sound art in my performance. My working method involves visiting the selected space, immersing myself in it, and observing its details, history, meanings, and atmosphere. Through my artwork, I aim to highlight the observations and thoughts that the place evokes within me. I want to encourage the audience to slow down and experience the space alongside me. I firmly believe that different places have much to teach us; we simply need to pause, sense and listen.


Marianne Turtio (b.1992) is a performance artist who combines performance practice with the theory of site-specificity. Marianne has a master’s degree in Visual Culture, Curating and Contemporary art at Aalto University. She also has a bachelor's degree in Performing arts.  She has work experience from acting and performing to working as an art instructor and event producer.

In Marianne’s recent artistic works she researches the concept of space. She creates performances and video documentations inspired by the communication between her direct environment and herself; she is fascinated by different social themes which come up from that dialogue.  Her heart beats for nature, urban spaces, sounds, interventions, other people and operating in public spaces. She finds her drive when questioning the actions of humankind by using forms of performance, bodily practices, sound - and video art.

2023, communal cooking and mixed media installation

‘the chopping, the stirring, the occasion’ is a food artwork that involves the communal cooking, data gathering, and a data-driven soundscape of preparation. The kitchen is an emotionally charged environment that acts as a threshold of intimacy and trust – to ‘see the kitchen’ is to be allowed in and accepted.

First is a communal preparation of a traditional Lithuanian dish, a cold beetroot soup ‘šaltibarščiai‘. During the preparation, chopping sounds are recorded with surface microphones attached to the chopping board. The finished soup is shared and comes with nice conversations.

The collected data is replayed on a loop as a perpetual, endless ritual of preparing a meal for guests. Utensils set on motors gently hit the cutting board, recreating a domestic soundscape of anticipation and care. As the rhythm repeats itself, the before and after of a meal becomes blurred, the kitchen turns mobile, and the invitation echoes.


Vytautas Bikauskas is a Lithuanian multimedia artist currently living in Helsinki, Finland. He has received his BA (Hons) in Interaction Design from the Glasgow School of Art, and is currently pursuing his MA in New Media at Aalto University. His practice is centered around time, rituals and labour. He also teaches Physics and is seeking spaces for shared art-science pedagogy.

2023, mixed media installation consisting of woven textiles, collage on paper, and diary entries

‘of the ordinary, in this ordinary (2023) emerged from a moment of pause, when doing my laundry in the summer of 2022. Thinking about how textiles occupy innocuous positions, all around our everyday lives, I started to pay closer attention to my daily life, and particularly the routines surrounding my everyday textiles in my home.

I see myself as a ‘translator’ in this process, translating the experiences of my home into textiles and traversing across mediums in this process. With each medium and transformation adding to the initial experience and observations, the daily life then translates onto textile, that is embedded with the rich storytelling that lies in the everyday. The installation consists of these multiple ‘translations’ - woven jacquard textiles, a diary, sketches and a collage book and reflects on how the space of the home, and my experiences with the textiles that live in it, can make what appears to be ‘mundane’ and ‘ordinary’, into something that is full of life. 


Anusuya Krishnaswamy (b. 1997) is a textile designer-maker based in Helsinki. With her practice she is particularly curious about woven constructions, and the intrinsic connection between the textile and the maker in the slow process. She is currently finishing an MA in Fashion, Clothing and Textile Design at Aalto University.

2023, embroidery installation

‘Do you imagine the life a person lives behind a window you pass by on the way to work? Was it a good day or a busy one when they left in a hurry leaving an unfinished meal behind? In this series of works Polina is exploring local food habits and home decorations which she then reforms and imitates with hand stitching, textile modification and fabric. The installation is made using a thin transparent tulle and an old window frame, found from a local vintage shop. In the first window of the series you’ll find Marimekko design plates and vases with a composition of flowers. In the Kalasatama window Polina is showing food-still-life compositions in addition to the flowers. The final piece can be experienced with different lighting that adds depth and perspective to the piece.

Poling Laamanen is a Russian-Finnish embroidery and textile artist currently based in Vantaa, Finland. Her background is in chemical engineering (MD). She has experimented with textile modification and hand embroidery since 2016. After finding her own style of embroidery Polina published a book (3d realistic embroidery, 144p, EKSMO, Moscow, 2020) She was featured in the Vogue Scandinavia magazine in 2022 and the Embroidery magazine in 2023. In her recent works Polina is exploring a combination of realistic botanical embroidery with Scandinavian graphic themes.

2023, video and mixed media installation

This project started with the question of a territorial dispute over "the" island.

What does it mean to possess? We try to own nature and fight over it through money, borders, boundaries, and maps, through the language we have defined. But from nature's perspective, such language does not exist.

The question invites people into a space to explore the meaning and behavior of human beings in trying to own nature. This installation is a space filled with salt representing a landscape, and the audience is invited to touch it with their bodies and hands, and to create their own spaces and boundaries. On the last day of the exhibition, a performance consisting of pouring water and washing away our traces, raises questions about the meaning of our actions. This question about one island extends to all the territorial conflicts that are happening around the world today, as well as to the question of how we exist with nature.


Jimin Hong (South Korea, 1997) is a practice-based designer based in Helsinki. Her practice integrates filmmaking, material research, and performance to question and create spaces for socio-cultural discourses. Her recent works explore territorial disputes, ecosystems, and beings threatened by biodiversity loss and climate change. She has a BA in Furniture Arts and Fine Arts and is currently pursuing an MA in Contemporary Design at Aalto University.

Divalicious Show Crew is an energetic and dashy dance group that has entertained people since 2013. You may have spotted them in the semifinals of the show Finland’s got Talent in 2018, in numerous music videos or performing at clubs or events. Divalicious Show Crew combines show and street dance styles with well known hits and latest bangers, and is guaranteed to get the party started!

Anette’s unique style varies from house to the groovier sounds of rhythmic soundscapes. Utilising an insatiable love for musical exploration to give you something that is unmistakably hers.

Cecilia Aintila aka DJ Vissyvesi is inspired by the spaces that can be created with music.

Stanislav Melentyev, better known by his stage name Stilicium, is an electronic music producer, multi-instrument musician, DJ and lover of nightlife and dance.