The nearly 400 years old Fiskars Village is truly something, full of old buildings but — as Valilla describes — definitely not an ”outdoor museum”.
— It has approximately 600 permanent residents and nearly one-third of them are artists, designers, creators, and craftspeople. You can really feel this in the village — there’s a deep appreciation for design and a certain open-mindedness that not all tiny villages exhibit as well as inspiring boutiques and workshops offering sustainable design and crafts for visitors.
The company behind Helsinki Design Week, Luovi Productions, together with Onoma, which is design company Fiskars’ own artists’ cooperative have now created the second edition of The Fiskars Village Art & Design Biennale.
— It explores current topics in contemporary art, design, and architecture, making room for something new and surprising. The three main exhibitions and an interdisciplinary parallel programme will be spread throughout the surrounding Raseborg region until the beginning of September, says Valilla.
Tell us more about this year’s edition.
— As mentioned, there are three really interesting main exhibitions at the heart of the Biennale. Knots & Knits, a part of the U-JOINTS design research project by Anniina Koivu and Andrea Caputo, zooms in on the often invisible joints and connections used in design and architecture. Seen for the first time at Salone del Mobile in Milan in 2018, it invites us to pay attention to these hidden details and appreciate their beauty and quality in objects and structures.
— The House by an Architect collection consists of seven mini houses designed by AS LL TK, Rintala Eggertsson Architects, Sommarnöjen, Ateljee Sotamaa, Studio Puisto, and the Wood Studio of Aalto University. The exhibition is completed by a house built in a tree. The final house of the collection is Kristian Talvitie’s KOJA, a modern treehouse designed for electric car brand Polestar. The houses combine wood architecture, interior design for small spaces, and contemporary art in a context that is gaining popularity worldwide. The mini house designs are not based on any given location but on adaptability to different environments. And making a small space functional, sustainable, and aesthetically attractive requires plenty of creativity.
— Hidden – Forms of the Senses by the Onoma artist cooperative is a manifesto for multisensory experiences. Curated by Laura Sarvilinna, the exhibition examines how our senses influence artistic work and how we experience art. Hidden is a sensual exhibition set up to consider the possibilities and limitations created by our senses, bodies and the environment, from the perspective of both the artist and the visitor.
As the Biennale’s main partner, Fiskars has created ten custom-made greenhouses, set up in pairs across the area.
— One greenhouse, Valilla shares, will feature raw materials used in our products — such as the iconic orange plastic known from our classic scissors — and the greenhouse next to it will display living, blooming plants. With this juxtaposition, we want to highlight the importance of preserving biodiversity — there’s immeasurable value in nature in its natural state, and not everything should be used. As a brand, we’re really focused on reinventing our materials to be more sustainable and more circular as we firmly believe circular solutions offer a solid solution to fighting biodiversity loss.
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