Porvoo is coming to visit

Porvoo Art Association is coming to Viljandi for a visit!

During the evening, works of well-known women artists with expressions from the 80's until today will be shown. All artists are living in Porvoo and/or have been working there. The audience can expect an interesting combination of visual art and performance on the stage.

Marikki Hakola (b. 1960)

Marikki Hakola is a media artist, film director and producer. She graduated as a visual artist from the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts in 1984, after she began working with video and performance art in 1982. Since then, Hakola has completed numerous video and multimedia art works, installations, music and dance films as well as performances. Hakola is an internationally recognized pioneer of European media art, with her work appearing at many exhibitions, festivals and TV channels. Her pieces are found in collections throughout several international art museums. Hakola lives and works in Porvoo.

Film: "Stilleben - Milena's Journey" (1989)

This video work is based on letters written by Franz Kafka to his beloved Milena. The central themes of the piece are distance, longing and memories. The layered imagery relies on the collective memories of the viewer. The starting point for this is master composer Kaija Saariaho's radiophonic work Stilleben.

 

Milla Moilanen (b. 1964)

Milla Moilanen is a director, media artist and a pioneer in Finnish digital animation. Moilanen has been working with moving images and multimedia since 1987. She has created short films and many kinds of audiovisual projects as an independent artist, graphic designer and photographer. Moilanen's award-winning pieces (Signals 1993, Deep 1994, Scale 1996, Wanted 1998, Dual 1999, Passage 2001, Vertebra 2003) have been presented at numerous festivals and exhibitions around the world. Moilanen lives and works in Porvoo. 

Film: "Wanted" (1998)

WANTED is based on the archival materials of the Uppsala Institute for racial biology (Uppsala University, Sweden). Today - in this very building - research into genetic manipulation is being conducted by dissecting DNA. WANTED animation deals with people's classification based on outward appearance. The subject matter is indeed a timely one, nowadays masked behind the cover of technology as it is. Does modern genetic manipulation justify the previous century's racial research? Wanted was one of the five nominees for the European Short Film Academy Award 1999.

 

Milja Viita (b. 1974)

Milja Viita's installations and films consist of experimental and documentary elements. Her works have been exhibited in e.g. Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, Kunsthalle Helsinki, Mänttä Art Festival and in film and media art festivals internationally. She graduated with an MFA degree in Time and Space Arts from the Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki in 2005. Viita lives and works in Porvoo.

Film: "Q" (2016) 

The artist's firstborn son transformed, in the blink of an eye, into a young man. Q is a conceptual film about forces that change the world. Q takes us to the end of the worlds, the depths of the ocean and to the ruins of Atlantis. Q's destruction is the road to new growth - it is the only promise of continuity and the emergence of new nations. Q is shot on 16 mm film whose surface has been hand-coloured. But what or who is Q?

 

Elli Rintala (b. 1978)

Elli Rintala is a documentary film director and screenwriter. She graduated in 2014 from Aalto University with an MA in documentary film directing. In her films, she is interested in how we as human beings can confront forces greater than us. Her experimental film "Oil Blue" was screened in many international film festivals. Rintala lives and works in Porvoo.

Film: "Oil Blue" (2008) 

An oil tanker is navigating along the Gulf of Finland. After the open sea the vessel changes its course towards an oil refinery on the coast. In this passage man, technology and nature confront each other.