Rauma Triennale

Background of the exhibition

The first Rauma Triennale took place in 2019, with its roots in Rauma Art Museum’s Rauma Biennale Balticum, which have been held since the late 1970s. The history of the biennale is full of movement and upheaval, but its home has always been the pink museum and the pastel-coloured city surrounding it. The first exhibitions had no common theme and only the coastal towns of the Gulf of Bothnia took part. By the 1990s, the Biennale exhibition already included all the countries of the Baltic Sea region. Curatorial responsibility was then taken over by invited curators and common themes highlighted the many realities of the region. The Biennale exhibitions have commented on political upheavals and the pollution of the Baltic Sea, and have provided insights into people’s daily lives and lives at a time when news cameras could not reach across borders.

High-quality publications have been an important part of the Biennale exhibitions, like one artwork among others. Since 1990, the exhibition catalogue has been the responsibility of an invited graphic designer.

The values cherished by the Rauma Triennale are community and international exchange in a time of environmental change. These values build on the legacy left by the biennale exhibitions to explore the different people and lifestyles of the common sea.

Rauma Triennale 2022: Imagine! What if!

RAUMA 11.6 – 25.9.2022

EURA 11.6. – 7.8.2022

Emma Ainala, Petri Blomqvist, Dovilè Dagiené (LT), Mollu Heino, Eeva Honkanen, Touko Hujanen, Maippi Ketola & Harri Vähänissi, Riikka Keränen, Hanna Koikkalainen, Airi Kuronen, Marjo Levlin, Metamorphoses (work group), Kristina Norman (EE), Yoko Ono (JP/USA), Paavo Paunu, Jaakko Pietiläinen, Sepideh Rahaa (IR/FIN), Sara Rantanen, Toisissa Tiloissa (Other spaces, work group), Kari Vehosalo and 10 runoilijaa

The theme of the 2022 Rauma Triennale is Imagine! What if! challenges us to ponder the question of what if everything were different. In the spirit of John Lennon’s song “Imagine”, the exhibition invites the public and artists to reflect on what the world is like, what it can become, what kind of world we dare to imagine and what kind of world we want to create. The exhibition is curated by Heta Kaisto, chief curator of Rauma Art Museum, and artist Teemu Mäki.

The exhibition features 21 works by artists or working groups. They include Yoko Ono’s rarely screened 1969 film Rape, monumental drawings by Eeva Honkanen and Airi Kuronen, video art by Kristina Norman, Jaakko Pietiläinen and Sepideh Rahaa, paintings by Emma Ainala, Sara Rananen and Kari Vehosalo, photographic art combining natural elements by Dovilè Dagiené and Hanna Koikkalainen, sculptures by Riikka Keränen and Paavo Paunu, installation by Maippi Ketola and Harri Vähänissi, and exercises that encounter other forms of being by the Other Spaces group. The exhibition also features a collection of texts by ten poets, including a focus on language translators. In addition to the curators, the poems have been selected by publisher Tommi Parkko and writer Riikka Pelo.

The exhibition will also include a community art piece, Metamorphosis, created in collaboration with amateur groups in Rauma. It includes artists from different communities, such as Värsym Baohaj, Rauma Theatre School, Satakunta Centre for Living Image and Kankaanpää Art School. Dance artist Laura Koistinen and visual artist Mikko Ängeslevä, visual art students Kiia Karjalainen, Viivi Osmonen and Ville-Pekka Vihma, soprano Piia Komsi, pianist Tiina Karakorpi and composer Riikka Talvitie have been involved in creating the exhibition’s body of work. Teemu Mäki is responsible for directing the community artwork.

Rauma Art Museum’s central mission is to preserve and promote the visual arts of Rauma and the region. In 2022, the triennale will also be held in Eura, 40 kilometres away, as part of Rauma Art Museum’s aim to add high-quality contemporary art to the Rauma region in the spirit of sustainable development. Kauttua’s Ruukinpuisto provides a unique setting for Risto Jarva Award-winner Marjo Levlin’s five-channel video piece Dividual Individual (2017), which explores the dark history of eugenics and race theory in Finland. Also on display in Eura are photographer Touko Hujanen’s collection on the life of a self-sufficient family, Forest Family (2017-2021), and photographer Petri Blomqvist’s series Images from a Lost Book, in which the artist follows a little girl’s encounter with nature over the years. Mollu Heino, a visual artist living and working in Luvia, is building a large-scale mirror mosaic sculpture in the space and continuing the development of a body of work she started at the Rauma Artists’ Association’s spring exhibition.

Sponsors of the exhibition:

Arts Promotion Centre
TVO
OP Western Finland
Laitila Wirvoitusjuomatehdas Oy Ltd.