ART FOR ALL
Collaboration and part of the Curation Team for the 2023 Festival edition (FI)
Welcome to the Art For All Festival!
This year, the art festival takes over the Kalasatama neighborhood in Helsinki, filling the everyday environments with art. The event presents emerging artists from different disciplines going from performances, to food art and textile works . With its projects, the Art For All community aims for better cross-artistic cooperation, bringing art to unusual places where everyone is welcome.
The 2023 edition of the festival revolves around the theme Invitation. The festival reflects on the meaning of home and the social interactions related to everyday environments. It explores the urban space of Kalasatama as a place of complex relationships to our surroundings, neighbors, plants, and others. The theme evolves in contact with the Kalasatama area, its inhabitants, and the artists during the Residency and workshops. The works invite the public to participate in various performances, to meet the artists over shared meals and teas, and to follow the stories of those encounters. The artists do research on and think about the role and importance of home; a clean and intimate space, its colours and tastes. They take a closer look at the concept of ownership and human interactions within and outside that space. Sometimes it is absent and even considered a wasteland. The selected artists explore the theme through multidisciplinary installations, growing and living artworks, dance, music, sound, participatory and site specific performances and textile pieces.
The festival is preceded by a week-long “neighborhood residency” where the artists build up their work in a cross-artistic environment and interact with the local residents. During the residency the artists will discuss the themes with researchers from various fields as well as with veteran artists from the Artist House Ars Longa.
This year’s festival is a mix between an open doors day, a block party and a gathering among neighbors and strangers. The event is organized in collaboration with HEKA Oy, Setlementtiasunnot, NAL-asunnot and the Artist House Ars Longa. The festival has been planned together with the local residents who are opening their semi-private everyday environments for visitors to experience.
Art for All (AFA) is a community supporting artists and art workers in the beginning of their careers. The organisation has been started by students and alumni from both the University of the Arts and Aalto University. In addition to offering peer support and multi-artistic collaboration, we produce an annual festival where artists from different elds have a platform to show their work.
The festival features works by various artists in the beginning of their careers. The artists were selected for the festival based on an anonymous open call. The call focused on works that combine different disciplines and engage the audience and other artists working on the festival.
The residency artists showcased are: Kulminaatio, Francesca Bogani Amadori and Henry Lämsä, Nagisa Mizuno, Zina Marpegan, Leena Pylkkö, Marianne Turtio, Vytautas Bikauskas, Anusuya Krishnaswamy, Polina Laamanen, Jimin Hong.
Documentation by Lù Chen and visual identity by OONA RÄYHÄNTAUSTA and UTKARSH RAUT