ALINA SAKKO / ELISA SAKKO

Lithic Alliance

Eivind H. Natvig

Antti Laitinen & Hanna Saarikoski

Andrea Palasti & Daniel Popovic

Harri Pälviranta

Hanna Husberg & Agata Marzecova

Eeva-Maija Walin (FIN)

Installation at KulttuuriKauppila Art Centre Gallery 15th June to 30th July.

Inari Virmakoski (FIN)

Environmental installation and performance, Jakkukylä suspension bridge; 15th June - 2nd July.

Hanna Kaisa Vainio (FIN)

Environmental installation; Environmental Art Park, 17th June to 30th July.

Filips Stanislavskis

Installation and a participatory performance. KulttuuriKauppila Art Centre 16th to19th June, performace Sat 18th June.

Gabi Schaffner & Tina‐Marie Friedrich (GER)

Live streamed radio broadcasts 15th to 19th June. Community-based narrow cast –event in Lähde-park Sat 18th June.

Juho Rahikka (FIN)

Video. Old Hamina art barns 16th June to 2nd July.

Joana Quiroga (BRA)

Socially engaged process and an installation. KulttuuriKauppila Art Centre from 16th to 19th June.

KILOTTAA artist collective (FIN)

Participatory performance and an environmental installation. Nättepori area Sat 18th June 4pm and until 2nd July.

FHHH (FIN)

Installation, on display by KulttuuriKauppila Art Centre 16th June to 19th June.

Olia Fedorova (UKR)

Videowork in Old Hamina Art barns 16th June to 2nd July.

Kotoaki Asano (JAP)

Environmental art work in Kuivaniemi, Merihelmi area. On display from 17th June to 30th July.

Simo Alitalo & Tuike Alitalo (FIN)

Guided sound walks in Ii 16th to 19th June in the KulttuuriKauppila and Old Hamina areas.

Carina Ahlskog (FIN) & Pernilla Eskilsson (SWE)

A performance in the art tent by KulttuuriKauppila Art Centre; 17th and 18th June.

Paula Suominen (FIN)

Tiina Vehkaperä (FIN)

Tiina Vehkaperä’s art strives towards the understanding of being, dynamics of communication and exploration of humanity.

Pia Hentunen (FIN)

 Pia Hentunen's Invisible insects is a series of sculptures of insects native to the Northern area that indicate the health of the biodiversity in Northern Ostrobothnia

Miia Kettunen (FIN)

Landshapes by artist Miia Kettunen emphasizes the fact that the local piece of land represents one part of the pristine ecosystem that spreads around the globe.

Marja Haapakangas & Maria Laitila (FIN)

At the Biennial the dance video Seusuo by Marja Haapakangas and Maria Laitila is set as an installation, that creates a quiet conversation between the video and some industrial produced peat on the floor.

Johanna Ruotsalainen & Simi Susanna Ruotsalainen (FIN)

Video installation I Am a Living Being by Johanna Ruotsalainen and Simi Susanna Ruotsalainen demonstrate that the earth has similar rights to exist and not to be exploited as humans and animals

Karoliina Niemelä & Pirjo Lempeä (FIN)

Karoliina Niemelä’s and Pirjo Lempeä’s The Beginning got its inspiration from the birth of the world and from the question of how did it all begin.

Anne Yoncha & workgroup (USA/FIN)

Re:Peat III is a series of works by Anne Yoncha resulting from art-science collaboration with researchers of the Natural Resources Institute Finland

Alan Bulfin (IRL) & Pii Anttila (FIN)

Fidelity of Home is a utility cupboard installation by Alan Bulfin and Pii Anttila made completely by using natural recipes that you can harvest or grow and do at home.

WRO on Tour screening program

WROcenter Group (POL): Wodospad (Cascade)

Jacek Zachodny (POL): The Drought

Andréa Stanislav (USA), Dean Lozow (USA) & Angelina Davydova (RUS): Reflect-Ii

Raquel Sakristan (ESP): Floating Structure

Iuliia Rokina & Vera Golubeva (RUS): Drop of Water

Meri Nikula (FIN) & Ignacio Pérez Pérez (VEN) & Kate Gane (AUS): Bottled Water Exports

Tina Mariane Krogh Madsen (DEN) & Malte Steiner (GER): Pintajännitys & Iijoki -suhteet

Pawel Kleszczewski & Kasia Zimnoch (POL): In The Beginning Was Water - Bradán Feasa

Mari Keski-Korsu (FIN): Beat to the Balance

Pawel Janicki (POL): The Flux

Maja Ingerslev (DEN): States of Winter

Christelle Mas (FRA/FIN): X-rays (H2O)

Laurel Jay Carpenter (GBR) & Terese Longva (NOR): Thirst

Timo Jokela

A work of site specific art, composed of a rake, a boat and a small building tells the story of the artist’s own family. Jokela’s grandfather moved to Ii with his daughter in the 1930s, with an axe as his only property. The grandfather who worked as a carpenter and a boat-maker came to Ii to build houses, some of which are still standing. The family’s daughter recalled on her turn in her old days how it was the best time of a summer to be in haymaking in the meadows of Hiastinlahti.

Outi Pieski

Forewalkers is based on the Sámi philosophy of the agreeable life (soabala eallin): preserving, protecting and supporting diversity in both nature and humans. Jenni Laiti and Outi Pieski have made their own borderless fence from walking sticks. In Sápmi, walking sticks traditionally have been used to mark reindeer calves in the bare mountains. Thus, this artwork references praxis which decolonises Sámis’ land by defining its borders. This piece also pays homage to the Sámi ancestors, who wandered before the artists and are their forewalkers. Their legacy is alive in Sámi culture today.

Alfio Bonanno

The first impulse to this work of art was given by a photograph where a tar-burning pit is being built, taken by Valto Pernu who had collected his fortune as a photographer working at the market place. The work combines thus the tradition of tar-burning pits of the area and a model of 19th century ‘Jähti’ ships of Ii. Combining these forms, the artist has created a communal place for people to sit in Hamina, whose history can be traced back as far as to the 14th century.

Vladimir Zorin

Vladimir Zorin, an active spokesman for the art field of Karelia, built in Ii a home where the wind is allowed to travel freely, without any restrictions. When an onlooker asked the artist why there wasn’t any entrance into the middle of the work, Zorin replied: – It is home of the wind, not that of man. The work whose plastic parts of different colours have been brought along by the artist from Petrozavodsk, makes a strong reference to the freedom of speech in Russia.

Jenni Tieaho

Jenni Tieaho, a visual artist from Siuntio, bent a horse out of willow, and the neighbouring boys called it ’Flame’. The very first Finnish horse of the country was also entered into a studbook in Ii. According to the artist, the willow growing in the river bed has been twined into the horse like the stories of its makers. ’Flame’ also reminds us of the fire of the old school of Kauppila from the ashes of which the Art Centre came into being in the hands of local artists.

Eyglò Harðardòttir

The Village welcomes guests arriving at the Art Centre. The artist wishes the work to live through leafs and water that its collects and lets flow slowly through itself. The sidewalls of the village parts have been painted with gentle residual colours that the artist has collected from the immediate surroundings of the work, with its meadow buttercups, birch leaves and the red walls of the old school building.

Lars Vilks

’Station’ located in front of the bus station that stirs opinions in Ii because of its shack-like facade is in all its coarseness a well-fitting pair for the terminal point of the bus line, where young people in particular like to spend their evenings. ‘Station’, or by its other name ’Tower of Ii’, is a continuation of the micro-state of Ladonia, completed in Scania as the artist’s life-work, that includes the wooden works called Nimis and Arx. ‘Station’ is the very first work of art completed in Finland and attached to Ladonia by which the artist wished to create a separate landmark for Ii.

Helena Kaikkonen

Crocheted works of textile art greeting gladly, high in the mighty trees appear only to those who really look at the landscape. When bright summer nights are changing into autumn evenings growing dusky and into the darkness of winter, the work begins to shine, lifting its watchers from darkness into light.

Egil Martin Kurdøl

A root from the tree that the work is based on is cleaved by a gypsum wall. Or is the root pushing through the gypsum? The work is a continuation of a series where the artist is building a relationship between nature and the industrial that is not built on the traditional juxtaposition but instead, on the possibilities set by both to each other and to third parties, in the spirit of political nonalignment. The nonalignment pact refers thus to the political positioning of the 1950s in between the great powers.

Maria Panínguak` Kjærulff

The work taking a stand towards the climate change is a future flash into the past. An eternal igloo is built of stone that will not melt. A perennial Greenlandic white flower grows around the work; and a myth from time immemorial is connected to picking it up: do not pick the flower, so that it will not begin to rain. Amidst big trees, the igloo is like a holy place of nature.

Linus Ersson

Peek into the mailbox of the work and grab yourself instructions how to enjoy nature. As it is so easy for modern man to forget it. Ersson has sketched a romantic nature idyll with his paintings and constructions. The work composed of details contains all the elements that you need for a perfect nature experience.

Maruyama Yoshiko

Leaf boat anchored to its place at the Kauppila shore tells a passer-by to stop. The stone words arranged around it ask you in Japanese and in Finnish, if you can hear the echo of nature and the past, if you can hear the flow of the Iijoki river, the soughing of leaves, the noise coming from the playing of children who have grown at the Kauppila school and the artists in their work building the works of the Biennale.

Ole Wich

The work, dealing with life and death, pays homage to a 34-year-old birch from Ii that was felled for the work. The birch erected into the ground with the top foremost has been stripped off for its funeral. It looks towards the graveyard located on the opposite bank, facing the inevitable death that came entirely unexpectedly in its case. Blue ropes between living birches and the dead birch reflect the sorrow and longing that binds the living and the dead together.

Lena Stenberg

A log cabin that is upside down at the river bench is a funny sight. The artist does not only want to make the audience happy with her work, but in addition to this, she also wants to turn self-evident things upside down. Because all the people do not have a roof over their heads, we should learn to appreciate our own homes more than before.

Nikolai Fedorov

Colourful pieces of cloth, a graphic tree with its wind chimes and white stones bring a cheerful breath of Northern Siberia to Ii, from the province of Yakutia. The work, leaning on Yakutian folk tradition and philosophy of life, brings the watcher to the other end of the world, to a place that asks you to calm down with its beauty. When you write wishes on the white stones of the work, they travel through the tree up into the sky from where they return back onto the earth in the form of a rain.

Sanna Koivisto

Sanna Koivisto, a visual artist from Ii, has created a meeting point in the environmental art park, to take a stand on people’s loneliness. The words ‘Notice me’ burned in 14 different languages into a white park bench remind us about the fact how many lonely people there are in the world. Anyone can enjoy the beauty of nature and meet another human being by the chairs placed in the middle of a pine forest.

Hekla Dögg Jónsdóttir

The very own wishing well of Ii is found in the shelter of a forest, under a big spruce. The well is surrounded by lava stones brought from Iceland that originate from the eruption of a volcano. The artist tells visitors to throw coins into the well and wish at the same time something good. You’ll never know, if the wish might come true.

Serge Olivier Fokoua

’Crowd’ with its kettle heads and wooden bodies welcomes a guest to the environmental art park of Ii, opened in 2012. The work, composed of kettles and pans collected from the local people, and of logs, reminds us of the importance of food as well as of the variety of nature and mankind. Cooking and kettles and pans connected to it are an important part of the everyday life of people living both in Finland and in Cameroon. With the logs in the work, Fokoua wishes to point out how people are in a manner similar to trees different both from outside and inside.

Antti Ylönen

Antti Ylönen is a sculptor living in Ii and one of the founding members of the KulttuuriKauppila Art Centre. The work is based on the idea of a sundial. The burnt logs connect it historically with the origin of KulttuuriKauppila. The logs date back to the old school which was located in the place of the art centre before it burned down. The logs have now returned to a new era and a new function.

Jaakko Pernu

Jaakko Pernu has been working with natural materials since 1988. His works often deal with the relationship between humans and nature. The starting point for the work ET was the material the artist uses in it. The body of the work is made of a larch tree trunk that his friend gave him several years ago. However, the person in question, who was called ET by the inner circle, passed away the same year. Pernu wanted to keep his memory alive by naming the work after him.

Birgitta Linhart

Birgitta Linhart has followed the pathway of the horrible story in the history of Ii of chaplain Matias’s death in the late 16th century. However, the work integrates with a different story as well. The imprint in the stone is part of the serie Meeting places -between humans and nature. Stargate is a place to go through into the nature that are surrounded by magical powers.

Vladimir Durnev

Vladimir Durnev created an environmental sculpture in Ii which is dedicated to a mythological story in Komi folk tradition about the cosmogonical swamp. In the story, two frog brothers, Jen and Omel, lived in the swamp. As they were trying to run away from mosquitoes, the brothers decided to move higher on the mound, but as a result, they fell down, broke their bones and turned to humans. Jen created the sun and all the good things, whereas Omel created the moon and all the bad things.

Zilvinas Landzbergas

With the sculptural piece My sister Zilvinas Landzbergas aims to shape a place that would tell a short and at the same time endless story from the past. People may forget things, but trees remember and carry memories with them.

Margrethe Pettersen

Margrethe Pettersen’s works often combine botanical, historical and mythological approaches. She usually works with narratives of plants or growths, and her works relate to the site, area or its people. Word ‘agálašvuodajurdda’, which is formed by using plants, means the idea of eternity in the Sámi language. The work utilizes only edible plants such as berry bushes and herbs, and the artist wishes that people would pick and use them.

Kristaps Gulbis

Kristaps Gulbis aims to produce momentary interventions in public spaces in order to break down elitism. Openness and accessibility are important in Gulbis’s works. The goal behind CacheArt is to familiarize the wider audience with contemporary art in a personal and democratic way by utilizing the system of geocaching and GPS technology for locating artworks. Is this one real? is hidden in the environmental art park and can be located with the following set of coordinates: N° 65 19.553 E° 025 22.889.

Timo Toots

Timo Toots, a courageous and critical interpreter of the field of contemporary art in Estonia, built a surveillance system for ants in Ii. The installation is an over-the-top version of a nature camera: microphones, sensors, and a camera observe the little society of the ants. The work shows us the direction in which the human society is going with uncountable surveillance systems controlling the way people live. With the push of a button the viewer becomes an agent of the personal surveillance agency.

Ingunn Utsi

Ingunn Utsi made her first ‘Gudni’ or ‘Tribute’ work in 1995 in the Ássebákti forest of Karasjok. Her new ‘Gudni II’ or ‘Tribute II,’ which she finished for the biennale, resembles a poem whose lines link Ii and Karasjok. “Two pines stand in a forest far from each other, still connected.” Gudni II is like a family tree whose branches stretch through distance and over generations.

Joar Nango

Joar Nango’s piece represents a different approach to the framework of an environmental-art biennale as it is process based and investigates the tradition of burning tar. At the biennale, traces and documentation of the process, conducted during the preparative workshop in June, can be seen.

Jenni Laiti

Forewalkers is based on the Sámi philosophy of the agreeable life (soabala eallin): preserving, protecting and supporting diversity in both nature and humans. Jenni Laiti and Outi Pieski have made their own borderless fence from walking sticks. In Sápmi, walking sticks traditionally have been used to mark reindeer calves in the bare mountains. Thus, this artwork references praxis which decolonises Sámis’ land by defining its borders. This piece also pays homage to the Sámi ancestors, who wandered before the artists and are their forewalkers. Their legacy is alive in Sámi culture today.

Carola Grahn

Carola Grahn’s contribution to the Ii biennale is a series consisting of three wood signs with hand-carved sentences positioned in relation to the landscape. The blunt sentences bring to mind human relations.

Aage Gaup

In the front of the park, a structure rises from the ground. The contours of a person can be seen in the forest, almost guarding the site. Aage Gaup’s piece is made from the trunks of pine trees, carved into a sculpture. From the material, he awakens vuovdeolmmo.

Tomas Colbengtson

Tomas Colbengtson’s pieces for this biennale are two silkscreen portraits of Sámi people printed on polycarbonate glass. The portraits are placed in nature, with a river as their backdrop. We can see the faces of two women, visualized through patterns taken from old carvings on reindeer antlers. The river passes behind their faces, symbolising the years that have passed and the culture that has vanished.

Matti Aikio

Matti Aikio’s sound installation tells about the present-day situation of the Sámi people in Finland. It turns upside down the Sámi storytelling tradition by presenting a story of the future.