Starting from June 15th Pasila Urban Art Center exhibits textile art by five artists: Elsa Häkkinen, Lakriima Machreich & Riikka Jalava, Melissa Sammalvaara and Leena Tuomanen. Versatile art is created with multiple different techniques and materials; recycling and environmental friendly methods are also values which the artists share. 

We warmly welcome you to the opening event of the exhibition, which takes place June 15th from 6PM to 8PM. Refreshments and small snacks will be available for the visitors. 

Pasila Urban Art Center is located in Opastinsilta 6. After the opening event the exhibition can be visited during the gallery’s opening hours: 

WED 12– 20
THU 12–18
FRI 12–18
SAT 13–18 

ELSA HÄKKINEN

Instagram: @piudet_

Elsa Häkkinen is Lapland-Vantaa-based artist and self-taught embroiderer. She loves yarn. Her greatest project this far is PIUDET – cross-stitched pictures of vulvas. Häkkinen thinks that making and experiencing these art works deconstruct the shame and taboos related to gender, both on a personal level and on a larger, collective level. Colourful and fun images of vulvas take part in changing the experience of shame planted in us by our society and turning it into a message of joy, emphasizing everyone’s right to be who they are and to be proud of it. Häkkinen’s art works are created in the intersection of art and crafts, and they take part in the tradition of feminist art. Pictures of vulvas are often familiar to us from toilet walls and under the bridges, and they are usually grasped as something vulgar; in Häkkinen’s art this strong symbol is harnessed to express power, beauty and pride!

RIIKKA JALAVA & LAKRIIMA MACHREICH

Instagram: @riikkaruut_art and @laku_design

Riikka Jalava and Lakriima Machreich are Helsinki based textile artists. They have worked together on various projects in design and art since 2015, and their work has been seen both domestically and internationally. Jalava & Machreich were awarded the 2nd prize in the category of textile design in the 2nd Young Textile Art Triennial YTAT in Łódz, 2016.

The pair share a material-based ecological way of working, and they are interested in how different shapes begin to emerge and how the material lives as the art work progresses. Sustainable development and the urban environment serve as sources of constant inspiration, and in their art they value both traditional and contemporary art methods.

The work “Toisiinsa sidotut” – “bound together” in English – is an art work that considers the possibilities of urban art through textile means. We live and breathe urban environment, which we have shaped into our vision with our townspeople. Art belongs to everyone and therefore to everything. “Toisiinsa sidotut” combines knit and abstract art, softness and hardness, regular and random. Life is full of contradictions that complement each other. The exhibition takes the viewer along the work around the exhibition space: the ensemble consists of six different knitwear. The work evokes not only the sense of sight, but also touch: viewer can touch the piece, even get wrapped in it. It is full of details and revelry in colour. The bound, regular knit comes to life in a new way when its surface is tinted. 

We grow and get shades of our lifes along our growth path; random bright smudges and sometimes darker stains. These colours make our life fuller. The loops of the knitted art work invite us along to think about the themes of being bound together and belonging in our lives and environments. 

MELISSA SAMMALVAARA

www.melissasammalvaara.com
Instagram: @melissasammalvaara

I am Melissa Sammalvaara, an artist and designer who is operating in Helsinki and various campsites and enjoys adventures. I create modern rya inspired by nature and moss, in which I look at the spatiality and the relationship between nature and modern human with different surfaces, materials and techniques. My hand-woven rya are richly tuffet-like and they vary in shape: they grow on walls as organic clusters and spread with their mycelia gently but purposefully. I produce my rya by hand by weaving, tufting, knitting and knotting, and as with traditional rya, making them is very slow and careful to do. 

My works can be found e.g. from the State Art Deposit Collection, Finland’s largest textile art collection and Institut finlandais in Paris. I graduated from Aalto University with a Master of Arts in 2019. I am currently working on a one-year grant from Finnish Cultural Foundation.

LEENA TUOMANEN

www.uniqeco.com

Instagram: @uniqeco

Leena Tuomanen is a textile and jewellery artist, who is known especially for her career as a product designer. She is nevertheless an artist, too, and “new ideas are bursting all the time”. In her art she combines her interest in street art, sculpturing and jewellery design, and on a theme level Tuomanen is interested in nature and its creatures and also humanity, closeness, and sensitivity. Tuomanen’s art works theme in Pasila exhibition is touch, and they combine different materials and techinques: textile art, sculpting and painting.