Art Ii Biennial 2010

The theme for the second Art Ii Bienniale, held in 2010, was Periphery. That theme aroused a lively debate which was further inspired by the conference lecture by the critic Otso Kantokorpi. The participation of the sensational conceptual artist Lars Vilks kindled a great amount of media buzz, particularly because he made his appearance with the Finnish Security Police; another instigator of media buzz was the attempted burning of Vilks’ piece, called Asema (Ii Tower), during the Midsummer festivities.

Curators

Curatorial team

The artists were invited to Ii by Sir Alfio Bonanno; Hiroko and Tatsuhiko Murata, the heads of the Japanese Youkobo Art Space; Jussi Valtakari, a northern visual artist;

Janne Kauppinen, a researcher at the Oulu Museum of Art; Executive Director of KulttuuriKauppila Leena Vuotovesi; as well as by the local community

Artists

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.

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.

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.

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.

Art Ii Biennial 2022

The theme of the 2022 Art Ii Biennial was “In the Air”. The biennial presented a compilation of 14 artworks, which addressed issues related to air as well as introduced new insights and methods to dealing with the element that surrounds us.

Art Ii Biennial 2020

The Finnish word maa means earth, but also country, dirt, ground, land soil, and terrain. The word also refers to the world. The concept of the Art Ii Biennial 2020 encompasses all these aspects of the earth and specifically the knowledge they possess.

Art Ii Biennial 2018

The concept of the Art Ii Biennial 2018 was built around the concept of water: water as the fundamental element in all forms of life, a cultural interface, a transformable material, a natural storage medium. The projects of the artists presented by the Art Ii Biennial 2018 demonstrated the large creative potential of water as a theme and as a medium.

Art Ii Biennial 2016

The Art Ii Biennial 2016 studied interlinkages between environmental art and the use of natural materials in the Sámi crafts tradition; the theme was “The Poetics of Material”. The event aimed to create new suggestions for how traditional Sámi livelihoods and Sámi identities could be conceived in our modern global economy and politics. Artists were chosen for this biennial on the basis of how connectedness to nature was manifest in their work.

Art Ii Biennial 2014

The theme of the Art Ii Biennial 2014, “Landscapes of Mind and Language”, explored the interaction among language, mind, culture and environment. This biennial challenged the artists, urging them to research into their language and mind with the means of environmental art.

Art Ii Biennial 2012

Along with Art Ii Biennial 2012, Ii Municipality obtained a unique Environmental Art Park which binds together the environmental art in Wanha Hamina and at KulttuuriKauppila Art Centre. The art of that biennial was prepared for the Environmental Art Park, which is located along nelostie, the national road No. 4, on the banks of the picturesque River Ii at the cape Koskiniemi. The Environmental Art Park forms a recreational area for residents and travelers alike. The partners made a preliminarily selection of artists working in their regions, and the main curator of the Art Ii Biennale, Timo Jokela, made the final choice of the artists who were to be invited to the exhibition.

Art Ii Biennial 2008

The theme for the first Art Ii Biennial, held in Ii in 2008, was Northern environmental art – structures and impact. The artists represented very different forms of northern environmental art, and during the ten-day workshop, they and their assistants produced pieces that were eventually placed in famous cultural heritage sites in the town of Ii: the old harbor and trading place Wanha Hamina and the KulttuuriKauppila Art Centre. The participation of Sir Alfio Bonanno, a legendary figure in land art and nature installations, made this Art Ii Biennal an exhibition with international significance.