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.

Curators

Marja Helander

Marja Helander, born in 1965, lives and works in Helsinki, Finland. Helander graduated as a painter from the Lahti Institute of Fine Arts in 1992 and as a photographer from the University of Art and Design in Helsinki in 1999. Since then she has presented her art in solo and group exhibitions both in Finland and abroad. Helander’s work explores the question of identity with regards to her Sámi background, the Sámi being the indigenous people of Scandinavia. Her recent work has focused on landscapes in which dark, mysterious views are portrayed without people. These portray the modern union between nature and mankind as not harmonious, but dark.

Maria Therese Stephansen

Maria Therese Stephansen, born in 1981, lives and works in Hammerfest, Finnmark, Norway. She works as the manager of education services, exhibition curator and project manager for The Museum of Reconstruction for Finnmark and North Troms. She is also a freelance curator, writer and producer. She was the project manager for HFT 2013 – Nasjonal kunstfestival, a national art festival focused on in-situ art; in addition, she is the chairman of Hammerfest Kunstforening. Stephansen obtained her master’s degree in visual culture from Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim on the subject of social art projects. Stephansen’s work covers a broad range of activities in the cultural field, and she takes a special interest in dance, performance, political and activist art, social/community art projects and in contemporary art in general, with a deeper interest in Sámi art as well as contemporary art from the Middle East.

Artists

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Outi Pieski

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.

Art Ii Biennial 2024

Concept - Fire Unbound

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 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 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.

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.