UNDER YOUR SKIN

The second installment of White Box’s three-year series on Finnish art is titled Under Your Skin. This title is culled from a landmark 1966 Finnish film by the acclaimed director Mikko Niskanen. However, the term “under your skin” is also an English colloquialism that refers to something troubling or exhilarating to the point that it gets “under one’s skin”. The first installment of the three-year series was entitled Finnish Tango and it echoed the imported Argentine dance as foil to address how Finnish artists absorb, translate and reconfigure influences from abroad into new transnational art practices. In contrast, Under Your Skin looks at Finnish artists who work outside of their native country, and to a lesser degree, those who work within it. The resulting dialogue between the myriad geo-cultural points of reference from inside and outside, will underscore the global nature of Finnish art that is nonetheless infused with the locality of wherever it is made. It is through its malleable, absorbent and protean nature that Finnish art undermines essentialism, and questions the mechanisms that construct nationalist discourses both within its own borders as well as where Finnish artists may work in the international arena.

Funded by FRAME, Finnish Fund for Contemporary Art

Pressetext

UNDER YOUR SKIN
Kurator: Raul Zamudio

mit Axel Antas, Elina Brotherus, Veli Granö, Pia Lindman, Teemu Maki, Fanni Niemi-Junkola, Riitta Päiväläinen, Anu Pennanen, Ilppho Pohjola, Riiko Sakkinen, Juha Suonpää, Santeri Tuori, Roi Vaara, u.a.