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Hanna Vahvaselkä

Sculptor 

MA 1999, Doctoral candidate since 2021, The Academy of Fine Arts, Helsinki

Working and living in Mikkeli

website: https://vahvaselka.kuvat.fi/

My research is organically linked to my artistic practise and arise from experience of handicraft and material-based processes. Artistic practise is also my main research method as well as essay writing by which I discuss with variety of references, such as fellow artists, teachers, critics, journalists, novelists and philosophical texts.

My research interests revolve around three-dimensional art, wood, working with materials, tradition of handicrafts, legacy of modernism, monuments, eGology, ecological issues, fissures, empathy, encounter and memory. 

  • Working WITH material. The significance of the material when forming an art piece. 
  • Wood as the material of contemporary sculpture and as a carrier of the collective memory.
  • Possibilities of immateriality and relational aesthetics in three-dimensional (handicraft based) artwork.
  • Utopia of hospitality: Art piece as a gesture of encounter and communication.
  • Possibilities for encounter IN the art piece or between the lines. 
  • Monuments of everyday life/ politics of memory. Monuments vs small intimate cultures of memorial. 
  • Memory of the material itself. 
  • Reconstruction and other cleaning: profession of an artist as a sort of cleaner or organiser, moving through traditions, layers of memories, expectations, patterns and stories which have existed, often through generations. 

I have a degree in pedagogy, and I teach occasionally; mainly in high- and secondary schools, but also in all kinds of projects, courses etc. 

KuvA research activities

This blog highlights the activities of the research unit and doctoral programme at the Academy of Fine Arts Helsinki | Tämä blogi esittelee Kuvataideakatemian tutkimusyksikön ja tohtorikoulutusohjelman tapahtumia ja toimintaa | I den här bloggen presenteras verksamheten och evenemangen vid Bildkonstsakademins forskningsenhet och doktorandprogram

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