MEET
/THE/ARTISTS
The Art for All Festival 2022 will study the dialogue between art and science as the artists collaborate with the garden’s researchers.
The festival is preceded by a week-long
Garden Residency where the artists build up their work in a cross-artistic environment. The garden is open as usual throughout that time and you are welcome to see the artists at work.
Laura Hasanen is a Finnish-American artist and art educator currently based in Helsinki. She received her BFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in 2015. She is currently pursuing her MA in Nordic Visual Studies and Art Education at Aalto University. hasanenlaura.com
Zara Asgher is an interdisciplinary visual artist and educator from Lahore, Pakistan. She graduated from the National College of Arts, Lahore, in 2011. She was awarded the prize for the 10 Best Works of the Young Artists Exhibition, Day After Tomorrow in 2012, by the Punjab Arts Council, Pakistan. Asgher has participated in group shows in Pakistan, Nepal, UAE and India. She was awarded a full scholarship to pursue an M.A. in Nordic Visual Studies and Art Education at Aalto University, Finland.
lick-drip-spit-splat2022, video and mixed media installation
When I say we need to unlearn, I mean people like me, who live in the west, and who work most of the time within institutions. I want to recognize that I am a part of this privileged space. I’m not speaking for a universal we that needs to unlearn. I’m speaking from within a university, a private university, where we tend to think that we know a lot. We tend to think that being rational is much more important than being embodied— or being in, cultivating, a rice field.” - Elaine Gan, Bud Book: Manual For Earthly Knowing, Gustafsson & Haapoja
In this work we would like to explore the body as a site for knowledge and a space for unlearning institutional methods of knowing and being. The piece will document a bodily exploration of natural substances, highlighting the act of licking as an unconventional method of knowledge production.
After carrying out several experiments for this piece, we discovered that the act of licking began to move beyond the experience of taste. Our tongues formed a different connection to the various materials and substances. By exploring this act, we became aware of our body’s changing relationship to these materials. The process became less about the sense of taste and more about the bodily experience of learning new ways of interacting and relating, thereby deconstructing our relationship to a particular bodily act and changing the way we interact with the world.
I work with textiles and sculpture. I enjoy handicraft methods, through which I am concretely present with the material, the form and the processing of these. I am interested in exploring everyday things and moments, communication, trails and different materials and objects. I will start my studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in the fall. katisilo.com
laahaa vaan (Dragging)
2022, mixed media installation
Laahaa, menemisen mukana seuraava
Vetää perässä, jäljessä, takaa, raahata
Jättää jälkiä pintaan
Laahaa vasten, kiinni pinnassa, vastakkain, puhki kulunut
Raahaamisen reitti liikkuu pinnalla
Jatkuva laahaus
Dragging (2022) is an installation consisting of sculptures and sound. It explores the experience of being dragged and trails and paths that are created on the surface by dragging.
laahaa vaan (Dragging)
2022, mixed media installation
Laahaa, menemisen mukana seuraava
Vetää perässä, jäljessä, takaa, raahata
Jättää jälkiä pintaan
Laahaa vasten, kiinni pinnassa, vastakkain, puhki kulunut
Raahaamisen reitti liikkuu pinnalla
Jatkuva laahaus
Dragging (2022) is an installation consisting of sculptures and sound. It explores the experience of being dragged and trails and paths that are created on the surface by dragging.
Jari Koho
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J. Koho is an artist working extensively with sound. Along with performances, sound installations, listening maps, sound walks, radio works and composing, Koho’s interest has recently been increasingly oriented towards listening practices and theories.
vuosi.bandcamp.com
Kuulostelua
2022, sound installation
Kuulostelua is a site-specific sound installation which brings together clearly perceptible and hidden, barely audible sounds recorded around Kaisaniemi Botanical Garden. The central themes of the sound installation is an the artist's interest in the everyday environment, and approaching, perceiving and experiencing it in a different way. It is also an attempt to approach and try to observe and notice the relationships, interactions, and multifaceted connections between different actors: such as people, animals, plants, materials, technologies, geographical location, and microclimates.
Kuulostelua
2022, sound installation
Kuulostelua is a site-specific sound installation which brings together clearly perceptible and hidden, barely audible sounds recorded around Kaisaniemi Botanical Garden. The central themes of the sound installation is an the artist's interest in the everyday environment, and approaching, perceiving and experiencing it in a different way. It is also an attempt to approach and try to observe and notice the relationships, interactions, and multifaceted connections between different actors: such as people, animals, plants, materials, technologies, geographical location, and microclimates.
Daniela Pascual
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Daniela Pascual (Quito, 1993) is an artist with a background in social sciences and urban governance. She creates passages between these fields to imagine other ways of being in the world. Her practice is site-responsive, and her research focuses on plant life, autonomy, and oracular methods. In 2021, she graduated from the MA in Live Art and Performance Studies at Uniarts Helsinki.
danielapascual.com
Desire paths | Kaisaniemi
2022, performance and site-specific installation
There are paths made of stone and, next to them, a gentle erosion. Erosion that stems from our feet going astray. Shortcuts, detours, illicit trails: the city is full of them. Some call it disobedience; others, desire. During the Garden Residency at Kaisaniemi Botanic Gardens, I will follow the garden's scripted routes, retrace others’ footsteps, and allow myself to drift. I will move to find companions and temporary roots, and I invite you to do the same. Stop by the small glasshouse near the garden’s main entrance. I will be there a couple of hours each day to help you get on track. If I don’t happen to be there, you will find guidelines for choosing your path. Desire paths | Kaisaniemi is a framework to reconnect, share and experiment with the streams of my research, some of which have long been buried underground. Thank you for joining and, please, bring comfortable shoes!
Desire paths | Kaisaniemi
2022, performance and site-specific installation
There are paths made of stone and, next to them, a gentle erosion. Erosion that stems from our feet going astray. Shortcuts, detours, illicit trails: the city is full of them. Some call it disobedience; others, desire. During the Garden Residency at Kaisaniemi Botanic Gardens, I will follow the garden's scripted routes, retrace others’ footsteps, and allow myself to drift. I will move to find companions and temporary roots, and I invite you to do the same. Stop by the small glasshouse near the garden’s main entrance. I will be there a couple of hours each day to help you get on track. If I don’t happen to be there, you will find guidelines for choosing your path. Desire paths | Kaisaniemi is a framework to reconnect, share and experiment with the streams of my research, some of which have long been buried underground. Thank you for joining and, please, bring comfortable shoes!
Zhao is a digital artist and visual communication designer. She is active in cross-disciplinary collaborations and has multiple identities dedicated to exploring the fields related to digital media art. Her works have output in both graphic visuals and video and have been exhibited at Shanghai Biennale, Picnic Art Festival, Kutz Art Center, tx Huaihai, etc. In her own continuous creation, Zhao is committed to exploring new forms of visual expression and delivery in virtual space and new exhibition forms in the digital age.
no soil
2022, multi-screen installation
No soil means that no sustenance for humans. We take birth on soil, live on soil, walk on the soil, die on soil, and finally vanish in soil. Soil is a synonym for Soul, with immense spiritual values. Our civilization has flourished because of soil. Soil is the most extensive biodiversity reservoir. Our health, culture, and social behavior are dictated by soil.
But since the Anthropocene, humans have had countless impacts on the earth and the soil. Desperately abusing the dirt to find a pathway for more people to survive, humans haven't realized that their destructive behavior is laying down consequences for themselves.
Even though humans, in general, are consciously trying to care for the soil, human interferences remain imbalanced and disastrous, causing ecological instability.
To make people think about their behavior and pay attention to human soil interaction, I created face filters based on different kinds of soil destruction caused by humans, Urbanization, Deforestation, Acidification, Desertification, and Salinization, Erosion, Mining. To map the seven disasters on the human face is just like reminding them of the seven deadly sins they have committed to our mother ground. In this way, I intend to arouse and acquire the Common Consciousness of humans and nature.
no soil
2022, multi-screen installation
No soil means that no sustenance for humans. We take birth on soil, live on soil, walk on the soil, die on soil, and finally vanish in soil. Soil is a synonym for Soul, with immense spiritual values. Our civilization has flourished because of soil. Soil is the most extensive biodiversity reservoir. Our health, culture, and social behavior are dictated by soil.
But since the Anthropocene, humans have had countless impacts on the earth and the soil. Desperately abusing the dirt to find a pathway for more people to survive, humans haven't realized that their destructive behavior is laying down consequences for themselves.
Even though humans, in general, are consciously trying to care for the soil, human interferences remain imbalanced and disastrous, causing ecological instability.
To make people think about their behavior and pay attention to human soil interaction, I created face filters based on different kinds of soil destruction caused by humans, Urbanization, Deforestation, Acidification, Desertification, and Salinization, Erosion, Mining. To map the seven disasters on the human face is just like reminding them of the seven deadly sins they have committed to our mother ground. In this way, I intend to arouse and acquire the Common Consciousness of humans and nature.
Maya Oliva is a choreographer and dancer who recently found a new base in Helsinki. Born in Montréal to an Italian/Polish family and raised in Florence. From an early age, she travels to New York, Milano, and Brussels, completing three years of studies at P.A.R.T.S. (2016). Since then, she creates performances in different working constellations in India, Prague, Brussels, Italy, and Helsinki, where she received her MA in choreography at The Theatre Academy (June 2022). Maya’s work approaches dance and performance from a liminal nomadic point of view. Choreographing constant becomings. A wish of inhabiting multiple in-between spaces, where the undefined and the ambiguous finds powerful existences. Shapeshifting between recognizable and other, monstrous.
mo·stru·ó·sa
2022, performance
A dance performance that will migrate within the spaces of the Botanic Garden. A slippage between humanity, animality, and organic matter, in constant transformation. A mutating organism travels from one ecosystem to another, allowing the surroundings to permeate its movements and breathing. In this performance, monstrous is what I become as I reach, sprouting roots towards other living organisms. It is something I can’t grasp but can feel. The audience can simply see me passing by as they are looking at other artworks, or they are welcome to follow me on my journey as I inhabit, adjust, and morph through different spaces.
mo·stru·ó·sa
2022, performance
A dance performance that will migrate within the spaces of the Botanic Garden. A slippage between humanity, animality, and organic matter, in constant transformation. A mutating organism travels from one ecosystem to another, allowing the surroundings to permeate its movements and breathing. In this performance, monstrous is what I become as I reach, sprouting roots towards other living organisms. It is something I can’t grasp but can feel. The audience can simply see me passing by as they are looking at other artworks, or they are welcome to follow me on my journey as I inhabit, adjust, and morph through different spaces.
Shambhavi Singh is a Graphic artist and researcher of Indian origin based in Helsinki. Her practice revolves heavily around graphic narratives, comics and sequential storytelling across different mediums. She has a Masters in Visual Communication Design from Aalto University, Helsinki and undergrad degrees in Visual communication design and Psychology. She makes comics, prints, animations, zines and murals that engage with the context of social inequality. Her work explores the notions of disconnect between people and their habitat. The stories in her work often border playfully on the routine and absurd. Her notable works include a mural at Peenya metro station, in collaboration with Bangalore Metro Rail corporation, India, a children’s book about a day in Bangalore slums, a narrative game on intersectionality of caste, class and gender in Garment factories and a comic on Premenstrual dysmorphic disorder.
Trickle trickle, soil and sizzle
2022, guache paintings on paper
Trickle trickle, soil and sizzle is a collection of narrative paintings that explore the relationships humans form with the landscapes (real or fictional) they inhabit. The work inspects the botanical garden as a social and cultural institution that has historically exhibited the wilderness of the global south as exotic trophies. In the greenhouses, wilderness becomes botanical. Natural becomes a cultural artefact, displaced from its soil for recreational and educational purposes. By reflecting on these contrasts— between the sterile and fertile, quiet and the tumultuous terrains, this exhibition contemplates on the notions of migration, belonging, cultivation and inhabitation.
Trickle trickle, soil and sizzle
2022, guache paintings on paper
Trickle trickle, soil and sizzle is a collection of narrative paintings that explore the relationships humans form with the landscapes (real or fictional) they inhabit. The work inspects the botanical garden as a social and cultural institution that has historically exhibited the wilderness of the global south as exotic trophies. In the greenhouses, wilderness becomes botanical. Natural becomes a cultural artefact, displaced from its soil for recreational and educational purposes. By reflecting on these contrasts— between the sterile and fertile, quiet and the tumultuous terrains, this exhibition contemplates on the notions of migration, belonging, cultivation and inhabitation.