Hive Mind
Curator: Stacey Koosel
“Hive Mind” is a group show that will feature works by Anna Estarriola, Pia Siren, Yassine Khaled and Riikka Hyvönen. “Hive Mind” is an exhibition that exists in two separate spaces at the same time, with works by the same artists mirroring each other in Art Hall Gallery and Tallinn City Gallery. The exhibition uses thought provoking artworks to raise questions about consciousness, communication, perception, judgement, emotions and how we experience these things.
In the spring of 2016 curator Stacey Koosel conducted a research trip to the University of the Arts Helsinki and the Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art where she met with Finnish curators and artists to gather information about prevalent conceptual trends in Finnish contemporary art. A recurring theme was the concept of ‘hive mind’ or ‘manufactured experience’, questioning the artificial or man-made nature of experience and knowledge. When bees or birds swarm they move together as a mass, each individual seems to know which way the group is moving instinctively as one collective mind. In humans we refer to this phenomena as mass consciousness or hive mind. Hive mind is shaped through collective thought and manufactured experiences that can include everything in day-to-day life from the strategic layout of the grocery store to sharing similar opinions with others – at its core, it’s the way you are supposed to see things.
“Hive Mind” brings two large scale installations by the celebrated Helsinki based artist Anna Estarriola and will show one of her best known works “Emerging Thoughts” a giant head complete with knitted hat murmuring with internal dialogue, on loan from Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art. Pia Siren will construct two new works, one at the Kunstihoone Gallery a 70 sq meter immersive forest installation, and another at Tallinn City Gallery. Yassine Khaled’s works stares down xenophobia and racial discrimination by using technology to create face to face communication in ‘Monitor Man’. Riikka Hyvönen’s internationally renowned series of sculpture meets paintings with psychedelic bruised butts ‘Roller Derby Kisses’ also debuts in Tallinn with four of her works split between the two galleries.
Hive Mind introduces the Estonian audience to new and exciting conceptual trends in Finnish contemporary art, and brings some of the finest and most exciting young artists to Tallinn.
Anna Estarriola (b.1980) is a Catalan artist who lives and works in Helsinki since 2004.Her practice involves exchanges and interactions between visual and media arts with performing arts and technology. The themes of her work revolve around the perception of reality, individual and communal behavior, communication and ways to approach the unknown. Her works are included in the collections of Kiasma, Museum of Contemporary Art / Finnish National Gallery, Emma Museum, Saastamoinen Foundation, Pori Art Museum and Amos Rex Art Museum.
Pia Sirén (b.1982) is a Finnish artist working mainly with large-scale temporary installations. She reconstructs natural landscapes using artificial materials, from plastics, tarpaulins and ropes to ladders, scaffolding and bricks, reflecting on temporary and ephemeral components of urban nature. The materials of her landscapes can be demolished and reused over and over again, each time in a different space and context. In 2013 she was awarded the Young Artist’s Prize by Maecenas Kilta. Sirén lives and works in Loviisa, Finland.
Yassine Khaled (b.1988) is a Moroccan visual artist based in Helsinki. His sculptures, installations, performances, paintings, and videos focus on the disparity between the power and wealth of some, and the powerlessness and poverty of others in our globalized world. Khaled was born, raised, and received his artistic training in Morocco and lives and currently works in Helsinki; this geographic and cultural shift has had an evident impact on his work. His work Monitor Man received an honorary mention at Prix Ars Electronica 2018, in Austria.
Riikka Hyvönen (b.1982) is a London based visual artist. Renowned for her mesmerizing series “Roller Derby Kisses” with bruises sculpted and painted as mini galaxies on leathery bottoms. Hyvönen has embraced different subcultures after growing up in Lapland. In addition to a proper dose of wood, leather and glitter, Hyvönen’s unapologetically kitsch and camp art usually demands her quite meticulous persistence with the paintbrush, as well as stable hands with the jigsaw.