Helinä Hukkataival

I will be working at the Saari Residence both by myself and with Inari Virmakoski.

In this fast-paced, unpredictable world, it seems more important to me than ever to be able to stop and just exist without any special task and without a detailed programme.

The residency gives me an opportunity to calm down and breathe, listen and observe myself, my work partner, the environment, fields, forest, the sea, and to sense the residence’s breath and history, to wait, accept and react without the pressure of performing.

Encounters in the residence and its surroundings, recording impressions, moving about and being quiet, observing my thoughts and sharing them with my work partner are both private and shared initial material that is seeking a visual form, which may be a performance, intervention, performance for the camera, an online performance or something else.

Inari and I have engaged in short-term, site-specific cooperation all over the world at performance events and festivals, but never in Finland, with a couple of exceptions. At the Saari Residence, we now have the opportunity for cooperation that we have been waiting for.

Helinä Hukkataival graduated in 1966 as an art teacher from the art institution in Helsinki now known as the Aalto University’s School of Arts, Design and Architecture and completed a bachelor’s degree in visual arts at the Department of Media and Arts at the Tampere University of Applied Sciences in 2007.

Hukkataival has worked as a visual artist since 1969 and simultaneously as an art teacher until 2001. Her works have been displayed in exhibitions and at festivals in Finland and abroad.

Since 1990, Hukkataival’s works have mainly focused on performance art. Since 2002, she has also been working with video and since 2011 with photography. Hukkataival was awarded the State Prize for Fine Arts in 2004.