Banal and perhaps a bit boring – or is it?
”Building up the Fractures of Life exhibition I have wondered what everyday life actually means,” says Marja Sakari, senior curator, in Kiasma’s new Audio Guide. ”I think people usually see it as our common daily routine, a kind of necessary evil.” Innocent concepts such as ’everyday life’ or ’ordinary people’ often imply a ready assumption about a division between us and them. Who wouldn’t want to be something special, not just the man or woman in the street. Let the others be ordinary and boring!”
Discussing everyday life, the works in the exhibition simultaneously change the way we see it. They encourage us to see our world in a new way – and perhaps that way they help us understand our environment and history.
”We easily take our daily life as if it were something negative, a collective misery. Everyday life implies work and drudgery, mere agony. With such an attitude, ordinary life consists of little more than worry, anxiety, troubles and responsibilities,” says Sakari.
Fractures of Life – Political Contemporary Art in Kiasma’s Collections invites us to see things differently and in a new light. But we cannot see differently unless we fracture our old ideas and preordained models of thinking. The word ’fractures’ refers to the social fracture of set values and circumstances of life that we all are witnessing. Auschwitz, 9/11 and the tsunami last December become turning points that people use to talk about time before and after them. Concepts and thoughts also become fractured in art – but not in a vacuum but in constant connection with social events and thoughts moving in time, that is, everyday life.
OPPORTUNITIES IN EVERYDAY LIFE
But might not everyday life be conceived differently, as a place for recharging, an energising sphere that gives us strength, a creative opportunity and satisfaction of living everyday life successfully? Can art break the boredom and frustration of the everyday, be a tool for under-standing? Could the ’dullness’ of life and its familiarity also contain seeds for creativity and a new beginning? In today’s society, where only the young and beautiful seem to get along, art can reveal the ”real” human face of time and destinies or innocence. At the same time these works ask, if it is not exactly in such individualism, imprints of life, that real beauty lies?
Of course, art can, especially when engaged in as therapy, offer moments of rest from routine. But there is more to art. It offers a path for considering the very issues that make life insupportable. In that sense, it offers us ways and means to understand life and difficult situations. The experience of art and identification with its subject call for stopping, thinking, active participation, also by stimulating conflicting emotions. This is where art differs from popular entertainment.
EVERYDAY LIFE AND ART
”I think that it’s possible to fracture the depressing idea of everyday life. Looking at everyday life from another perspective, such as that of another person’s, we can get a wider view of the familiar daily life. Even a slight change of perspective can lead to new ideas and learning. This is where art comes in,” says Marja Sakari in the Audio Guide.
To sum up, art can be about everyday life, it can be inspired by ordinary events or it can be critical of daily life. It also comments on the events and phenomena in the surrounding society and this way becomes part of our lives. Alternatively, art can offer a rest from a hectic everyday life filled with work. Art can also serve as a retreat or create illusions about a better and more tolerable everyday life. The works both belong to the everyday and transcend it.
FRACTURES OF LIFE
Political Contemporary Art in Kiasma’s Collections
2 Apr – 27 Nov, 2nd and 3rd floors
Artists
Eija-Liisa Ahtila, Martti Aiha, Tuija Arminen, Kari Cavén, Henrik Duncker, Maria Duncker, Eva & Adele, Maria Friberg, Miklos Gaál, Sigurdur Gudmundsson, Hulda Hákon, Ilkka Halso, Mia Hamari, Annika von Hausswolff, Jussi Heikkilä, Heli Hiltunen, Gun Holmström, Jari Huhta, Irmeli Hulkko, Niilo Hyttinen, Petri Hytönen, Heini Hölttä, Juha-Pekka Inkinen, Anna Jermolaewa, Ulla Jokisalo, Aarne Jämsä, Martti Jämsä, Jan Kaila, Marja Kanervo, William Kentridge, Jukka Korkeila, Hannele Kumpulainen, Harri Larjosto, Jukka Lehtinen, Henrietta Lehtonen, Jaakko Niemelä, Fanni Niemi-Junkola, Pekka Niskanen, Mari Rantanen, Aurora Reinhard, Torsten Renqvist, Nina Roos, Raffael Rheinsberg, Pipilotti Rist, Catarina Ryöppy, Paavo Räbinä, Ari Saarto, Karin Sander, Sanna Sarva, Igor Savchenko, Santiago Sierra, Jari Silomäki, Mari Slaattelid, Kari Soinio, Pekka Syrjälä, Pasi Tammi, Antoni Tàpies, Eeva Tiisala, Jaan Toomik; Gintautas Trimakas, Elena Valiukaite-Mikolaitiene & Nomeda Urboniene; Anu Tuominen, Yrjö Tuunanen, Marianna Uutinen, Oliver Whitehead, Darius Ziura
