July 2022
There where water meets shore
The window shows things related to shore activities. I enclose my own manifesto on the contemporary worries that climate change has brought into my life. I do not know how fast the sea level will rise, whether it will reach my window in Kalasatama.
I have been measuring the shores of Helsinki since the spring of 2020. I use branch I found on the shores, on which I mark the 20 cm intervals with tape. I set the brunch to sea level and a friend takes a picture. Taking a picture as an event and a picture after that do not produce empirical information anywhere. But as an act, it draws attention to the possibility of making one’s own observations and forming one’s own perception of the environment.
On display at the Window Gallery Fönari during July 2022. Tukkutorinkuja 6, 00580 Helsinki.
In the window:
2 x 100 years old sea map, Baltic Ocean
3 x old device for fishing, ’rysä’ , Mäntyharju
1 x painting study of the water and ground Lugano 1988-89
1 x wood used for measuring the sea level, Kalasatama 2022
1 x a photo ’Metro Station’ of measuring the sea level in Kalasatama May 2022, assisted by Merja Heino
2.6.-24.7.2022
Landing Stage
Beach Boulevard
Environment and Justice -exhibition 2.6.-24.7.2022. Longa & Fönari, Tukkutorinkuja 6, 00580 Helsinki.Gallery Longa open 2.6. – 24.6. (visible from the windows until July 24):
Wed – Fri 12 – 18
Sat – Sun 12 – 16
Fönari is open 2.6. – 30.6. 24/7
The exhibition & event has been supported by the City of Helsinki.
The Siemenpuusäätiö has taken part in organizing the climate change workshop. More information:
https://longafonari.blogspot.com https://www.instagram.com/longa.fonari/?hl=fi
The exhibition includes photographs, paintings, graphics, installations, a video essay and a musical performance. Some artists focus on greening the environment in a variety of ways. During the opening, there will be a creative climate change workshop, which is suitable for all ages. Participating artists:
Vesa Arjatsalo, Pira Cousin, Viva Grandlund, Ritva Harle, Terhi Hartikainen, Merja Heino, Janika Holm, Sanna Karlsson-Sutisna, Nella Central Series, Nastaran Nasir Zadeh, Teija Oikkonen, Marjatta Oja, Noora Ojala, Ulla Paakkunainen, Hannu Pakarinen , Markku Tanttu and Inari Virmakoski
Sompasaari Bridge
2.6.2022 Oja’s works are part of the exhibition about Environment and Justice. Opening of the exhibition 2.6.2022, starting at 4pm in the Gallery Longa of Ars Longa -house Artists, Tukkutorinkuja 6 00580 Helsinki. Welcome!
9.3.2022 Marjatta Oja participated Nature Dialogue online
Mukana keskustelemassa kirjailija ja filosofi Antti Salminen, aktivisti ja Saamelaisneuvoston vpj. Áslat Holmberg, dekolonisaatiota tutkiva antropologi Jasmin Immonen, kuvataiteilija Marjatta Oja,ympäristöaktivisti Ulla Laukkanen sekä Suomen luonnonsuojeluliiton toiminnanjohtaja Tapani Veistola. Keskustelun moderoi Siemenpuun varapuheenjohtaja Noora Ojala.
Kuva, Noora Ojala: Keräilytaloutta. Chico Mendesin keräilytalous- ja suojelualue, Acre, Brasilia. Valokuvaesseessä “Elävä ja kuoleva” (2021)
Free translation:
Participators of the discussion were writer and philosopher Antti Salminen, activist and vice-president of the Sámi Council Áslat Holmberg, anthropologist studying decolonization, visual artist Marjatta Oja, environmental activist Ulla Laukkanen and Executive Director of the Finnish Association for Nature Conservation Tapani Veistola. The discussion was moderated by Noora Ojala, Vice President of Siemenpuu.
The photo above, Noora Ojala: The Collecting Economy. Chico Mendes Collection and Conservation Area, Acre, Brazil. In the photo essay “Living and Dying” (2021)
During 2022 Oja makes new situation sculptures, plans new Coast Guard Girrls projects with Riikka Kevo (started 2020), a performance/presentation as an artistic research in the Uniarts with Mari Martin (coming 2022) and an art/reseach project with Leena Valkeapää & Jaana Erkkilä-Hill in their new group (coming 2022).
13.8.2021 Quantum Critic book launch in Myymälä2, Helsinki
20.5.- 13.6.2021 ’In the Wind – Sensing the Location Now’ is a collective exhibition introducing visual art, environmental art and live art combined together for this unique event, inviting all and anyone who is interested in art, activism and current topics regarding research in arts. This three-week-event will include the main exhibition, performances and discussions. The event is also part of the Art Fair Finland – contemporary art festival.
Riikka Kevo, Mari Martin, Marjatta Oja ja/and Leena & Oula A. Valkeapää 20.5.- 13.6.2021 Myymälä 2, Uudenmaankatu 23 F, 00120 Helsinki ke-la 12-18, su 12-17, ma-ti suljettu / wed-sat 12-18, sun 12-17, mon-tue closed
https://www.uniarts.fi/…/in-the-wind-sensing-the-location…/
https://www.facebook.com/In-the-Wind-Sensing-the-Location-Now-106557221543183
8.3.2021 Publication of the article in artistic research, Ruukku-journal, Studies in Artistic Research
Marjatta Oja‘s exposition “Pienenergia, arkisto ja uusi aktivismi” (Local energy, archive and new activism) challenges us to consider the scale and rhythms of artistic work in relation to energy consumption, both in its concrete meaning and at the level of the values and structures that guide these activities. At the same time, Oja draws attention to the scale of an individual’s artistic, bodily and everyday activities and brings together, in an original and topical way, a critical ecological discussion of energy and the unsustainability of our culture, as well as experimental artistic work. At the same time, Oja challenges the models and structures of artistic activity with their practices committed to longevity.
The whole editoral part of the publication: http://ruukku-journal.fi/en/issues/15/editorial
Marjatta Oja and Minna Heikinaho were interviewed in Forssa Museum by the museum director Kati Kivimäki. Premier of clip 25.2.2021 at 7pm.
Framed Errors 26.1.-21.2.2021 exhibition in Forssa Museum
‘Forssa-born artist Marjatta Oja found faulty fabrics in her cottage – an exhibition created from the contents of Finlayson’s sack bags’ . google translated.
more information: http://www.forssanmuseo.fi/ajankohtaista/?newsid=627&newstitle=Marjatta+Oja%3A+Kehystetyt+virheet+26.1.-21.2.2020
https://www.instagram.com/p/CKimzKvBcwM/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
https://www.facebook.com/forssanmuseo
3.12.2020 A photo work published in Italian newspaper! As part of article about Manifesta13 and ARKAD.
MARSEILLE PROGRAM
START ESADMM 23-28/11/20 12h-19h VISUAL TRANSDISCIPLINARY ART 23-28/11/20
Stefan Bressel, Roberto Boccaccino, Barbara Cammarata, Carla Costanza, Francesco Cucchiara, Gandolfo Gabriele David, Mauro Filippi, Pietro Fortuna, Daniele Franzella, Andrea Kantos, Riikka Kevo, Giacomo Rizzo, Marjatta Oja, Alberto Ruce, Leena e Oula Valkeapää
as part of KAD PRESENTS ARKAD Ideated and curated by Dimora OZ and Analogique
KAD (Kalsa Art District) presents, for Manifesta 13 Les Parallèles du Sud, the collateral event ARKAD, curated by Dimora OZ and Analogique.
22.10.-8.11.2020 Quantum Critic, with Collective Intelligence, Myymälä2, Helsinki
Riikka Kevo 29.02.2020 FB:
We are co-presenting with Marjatta Oja, Doctor of Visual Arts, and our project, Coast Guard Girrls, as part of the Italian ARKAD artist group Manifesta 13 at the Marseille Art Festival with our three-piece work, Taken by the Wind (2020). Our section is the official Les Parallèles du Sud. Welcome to France! Manifesta 13 to Marseille spreads throughout the Marseille-Mento region.
RUUDUN TAKANA
17.01.–01.03.2020
Galleria Rankka proudly presents
Galleria Rankka’s first expo in 2020 is a cavalcade of four Artists.
The Finnish video art pioneer Marjatta Oja modifies space with the moving image, the superdrawer Heikki Leis shows us his two-dimensional hyperreality, Maarit Rantala paints her sensitive and tragic universe and sculptor Laura Könönen brings up granite, a glowing threat and a feeling of danger.
Four different stories out of the reality we live in – told in four different ways.
Galleria Rankka
Eerikinkatu 36
00180 Helsinki
Open: Tue–Sun 13–18
galleriarankka.com
https://www.facebook.com/events/887934214973233/
Images picked up from the published article: https://kultuur.err.ee/1025899/galerii-heikki-leis-avas-helsingis-soome-kunstnikega-uhisnaituse#lg=1&slide=14
Research Project: Artist-activist in post-fossil revolution
October 2018
Collective Intelligence presents a series of experimental actions and events under the title IL TRAFFICO, for the 5x5x5 section of selected artists at Manifesta12, The planetary garden – Cultivating Coexistence. IL TRAFFICO is an experimental relational-art project focusing on methods for consensus and enhancing local ongoing processes in Sicily.
Collective Intelligence is an artist group who organizes a series of deep-dive sessions, encounters where artists, thinkers and activists work on parallel and shared projects, influencing each other in a convivial frame.
Collective Intelligence participants for IL TRAFFICO are: Antti Ahonen (FI), Ionas Amelung (DE), Alan Bulfin (IE/FI), Erika De Martino (IT/FI), Johanna Fredriksson (FI), Jytte Hill (DE), Egle Oddo (IT/FI), Marjatta Oja (FI), Saša Nemec (SI), Leonardo Ruvolo (IT), Timo Tuhkanen (FI).
During their projects in Sicily, Collective Intelligence has been collaborating with several local partners: the STEBICEF department of University of Palermo, Orestiadi Foundation, Sementi Indipendenti, and Dimora Oz artists run association. Dimora Oz collaborates with IL TRAFFICO through the contribution of: Stefan Bressel (DE), Francesco Cucchiara (IT), Gandolfo Gabriele David (IT), Daniele Di Luca (IT), Andrea Kantos (IT), Fabio R. Lattuca (IT), Michele Vaccaro (IT).
CI Press Pictures: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/a1aiipuvtfr806i/AAAnRlm3JfVAoOiUBRgC6GZ-a?dl=0
In the middle of September 2018
I was building the second Growing A Language exhibition in Myymälä2 Helsinki, with the other members of the group Collective Intelligence.
The show features a series of works realised between Finland, Germany and Sicily, in occasion of the artists’ participation to Manifesta12, and during their group residency at Fondazione Orestiadi. Their process will continue in October during the Il Traffico project as part of Manifesta’s 5x5x5 program.
The title of the exhibition, Growing a Language, uses the word growing as opposed to developing because it wants to contest the idea of development in its entirety. Urban development for instance often excludes plants, animals, and other biological and emotional factors from its planning and implementation. The act of growing a common language implies the amplification of the relations between different creatures and their environments, being critical towards the typical rational mode of developing systems and realizing dreams.
The common discourse on sonic, visual, conceptual, or text based approach, emerges from the different subjectivities, entangling and enlightening the intersections of the artists’ practices.
19.-23.9.2018
In the beginning of September 2018
Jukka Rusanen invited me to show my situationsculpture Hands 2010 in his retrospective exhibition ELEMENTS in the Lachenmann Art Gallery in Frankfurt am Main. I have been in dialogue with Jukka couple of years about our common interest concerning body and how it is experienced.
https://www.lachenmann-art.com
August 2018
RE-EXCAVATIONS | Exhibition at CDEx – Elastic Spaces
I participated remotely in Re-excavations exhibition in CDEx UQAM, Montreal. The exhibition is a continuation of the research project, which started In Helsinki 2017 with DFA Shoji Kato and DFA Paul Landon. The participants work with certain place together, creating individual artworks for the exhibition.
Re-excavation reflects on archaeological methods of unearthing and digging up. With this exhibition project it is the urban landscape that is re-dug up. The present and past city is reconsidered, what has been found repurposed for its future. Urban space is uncovered, expanded and upturned, interpreted as an abstract diagram, as material residue, as rumours of past usages and activities, as oral accounts and lived experience.
Montreal Crossing, 2018. Photo by Paul Landon.
The Re-exacavations exhibition with the works by Kévin Pividic, Pépite & Josèphe-Expédition, Paul Landon, Shoji Kato and Marjatta Oja
http://www.elasticspaces.hexagram.ca/2018/08/06/re-excavations-exhibition-at-cdex/
During 2018 summer
I have been participating the exhibitions in Sicily in the group called Collective Intelligence. At first In Dimora Oz ‘KaOZ’ (curated by Andrea Kantos) exhibition place in Palermo as collateral event of Manifesta 12 and secondly in ‘Growing A Language’ exhibition in Gibellina Sicily run by Fondazione Orestiadi.
Palermo Park 2018, photo by Francesco Cucchiara
Gibellina Ground 2018, photo by Egle Oddo