sculpture network start'19 in Artists Studio Minna Kangasmaa, Oulu:

Sculptor Minna Kangasmaa hosts sculpture network’s start’19 in the northernmost location. For the sixth time the International Celebration of Contemporary Sculpture takes place in North of Finland in Oulu, at Sculptor Minna Kangasmaas studio in Hiukkavaara. You are warmly welcome.

On Sunday 27 January 2019 starting at 12.00 pm. (local time).

Minna Kangasmaa Artist Studio
Hiukkavaaran kasarmit K2
Hiukanpiha 25, 90670 Oulu
, Finland

Since 2008 Minna Kangasmaa has been working on a series of work Systema naturae. It has completed over twenty pieces that are large sculptures and installations. A series of works Systema naturae brings under scrutiny interactions between human, society and nature and their potential to generate both destruction and progress.

In the 18th century Carl von Linné placed human in his taxonomic system as one species in the order of primates. He added the motto “nosce te ipsum” – know thyself – after the designation. Based on this motto, Minna Kangasmaa has made a series of works that seek alternative ways to understand this planet as a meeting point for humans and non-humans. Our relationship with nature, how we use the decreasing resources and treat other people, animals, plants and everything else on this planet, will affect our present and future. Empathy plays a crucial role, as it may be the way to a new kind of understanding.

“One of my starting points is that people, nature and society or culture and technology is not seen as separate but interrelated, parallel parts of the common collective. In my art works I try to open up perspectives out of our human-centred worldview and challenge the relationship to the material world, because I am convinced that there is nothing more important and urgent than to look at the current ecological crisis.

Environmental issues are important to me, but in their own way, they are difficult subjects in art and anyway. Timothy Morton writes in his book "Ecology without nature" that nowadays hardly anybody likes to mention the environment because it sounds boring or judgmental or hysterical, or a mixture of all these. But there is a deeper reason. Nobody likes to mention the environment because it brings it to the foreground. In other words, it stops being the environment. It stops being something that surrounds us and sustain us. When you think about where your waste goes, your world starts to shrink.”

Minna Kangasmaa is interested to make trans disciplinary work and research spanning visual arts and social practices linked with society, science and technology. Her artistic practice includes also collaboration with other artists. In 2015 Minna Kangasmaa founded Hotel Infinity, an international artist-run initiative and nomadic collective that gathers together artists and art operatives from Finland and abroad into the network. The purpose is to use the collective as a tool for promoting international artistic cooperation in the field of contemporary art.