Anni Kinnunen’s works have an unreal atmosphere that is created in carefully constructed, authentic photoshoots. Like a painter, she uses colour and light in a way that creates a surreal and magical feeling. The negotiation at the interface between the natural and the unnatural also opens up to include the nature of beauty, reality and death. In her works, she explores how individuals and societies deal with existential threats and continue their daily lives, despite the global challenges that exist in the background. We are living in a fog.
The video works Hollow (2018), Hydrangea (2018) and Zantedeschia (2018) shown in the Darkroom have been exhibited as part of the larger exhibition The Great Escape, in which Kinnunen critically examines our time and its phenomena. She often uses cut flowers in her works, which reflect the cycle of life and the universal symbolism of beauty, but which also refer to the processes of ecological change. Although the colour beautifully draws out the plant from the darkness, it also eventually kills it. Depending on the perspective, the works relate to either naturalness or the alienation from nature, denial of death or stoic acceptance of it. However, Kinnunen’s second trademark, synthetic hair, has to do with the emphasis on individualism and the culture of the artificial. The figure wearing the hair is deeply unsettling in its silent facelessness. Perhaps the discomfort stems from the thought that “one by one we leave, faceless and hollow”, as visual artist, researcher Jyrki Siukonen describes the work.
Anni Kinnunen (b. 1978) is a visual artist who lives and works in Oulu. Her photographic thinking has attracted interest both in Finland and internationally. She chooses the best possible ways to convey her artistic expression and message, and the work can take the form of a photograph, video, installation or sculpture. Kinnunen’s works belong to larger, serial bodies of work, that she might work on for several years. Two publications of Kinnunen’s works have been published (2007, 2013) and her works are included in the collections of, among others, the Oulu Art Museum, the City of Tampere and the State Art Commission.
The artist’s work has been supported by the Arts Promotion Centre Finland and the Finnish Cultural Foundation. The exhibition is supported by the Finnish Heritage Agency.
