ATHANASÍA AARNIOSUO:
THE SIDELINES
MAY 3–26, 2024
OKSASENKATU 11
First, a heavy door; you push it open, then a few steps lead you into the space. You’re not quite sure what to expect, not this time, even though you’ve been here countless times in the past. You know the space well, the floor, so graphic, so black and white and beautiful, is now somewhat sticky with remnants of last night’s party. The drawing on your right hand side reminds you of something, was it here last time? On the wall to your left, a small picture of a building, this building but of another time.
You bump into someone you recognise, always the same familiar faces at these events. You hope you will meet someone new tonight. You say hello.
You pick up the leaflet as you venture further in. Traces of yesteryear scattered on the floor, on the walls, on the mis-matched chairs and bar stools that one finds in the smaller room, the one further in, next to the kitchen-turned-bar. On the bathroom door, a scribbled phone number, urging you to dial it “for a good time”, alongside a desperate confession, ΚΛΕΙΩ Σ'ΑΓΑΠΩ, Kleio I love you, and in that moment, you love her too.
It’s starting to get crowded, so you sway towards the spiral staircase, the descent makes you dizzy, adding to the effect of the Bacardi Breezer someone placed in your hand. You are feeling a little self-conscious, yet curious. Step by step, you proceed carefully, the darkness of the world below rising first to your hips and then your hair.
The music is different downstairs, upstairs is probably better. Why did you have to squeeze yourself all the way down here? Just so you can say you went. The people look different, too. Maybe a little older, you think, definitely gothier compared to your tan summer look. You are almost ready to go back to the more familiar party upstairs, but you get pulled through the final doorway towards a surprise.
A game of beach volley, is that right? Everything is possible here. If you’re ever going to do this, do it here, do it now. Participate. Feel the sand under your shoes, under the same black Converse All Star sneakers everyone else is wearing, even the goths. You don’t manage to dodge the ball that hits you in the face, someone gently wipes from your cheeks not blood but tears of happiness, is it happiness this feeling of belonging.
For a moment, you feel as exceptional as everyone else, and you take that feeling with you when you walk back through the hallway, up the stairs as the smoke swirls around you, past the ill-assorted chairs, out the heavy door, through the park, and in to the taxi or the bus that will take you back to your reality.
All photographs by Aava Eronen except the last one by Anni Hanén.
Athanasía Aarniosuo
Chance Meetings
10.3.–2.4.2023
Huuto IV
I remember the time fondly. I cannot remember whose flat that is, but the streets are definitely ours. We never went home, did we? We shared secrets, flirted with everyone, danced so much. “I’ll be your plastic toy,” sang Jim Reid.
Chance Meetings is an exhibition about the music that I listened to while growing up and the people I met along the way. Some of those people became my friends for years to come and others only for the duration of one song, which was mainly dictated by chance, but they were all important and our shared moments were beautiful. And I do not only mean the moments when we danced and laughed but also when we cried. I do not regret any time when I was present and when I loved. Afterwards, meaning can be given to sorrows as well.
I have explored nostalgia, stories and identity in my artistic and academic work for several years now. A new element in this exhibition is that it focuses on specific people and pop music. Music helps me focus on a moment and later bring back the feeling vividly. Just like with the themes of my works, also through my choice of nostalgic techniques I tell stories of the past.
Photographs by Aava Eronen.
19.10. – 19.11.2022
EKTÓS Art Space, Athens, Greece
“Ode to Oleander” is an exhibition about the things I have lost and cannot have back. About those childhood road trips, three of us in the back seat, me always in the middle to keep the little ones from arguing. About the pink, white, red bushes that sprawled ahead us for miles and miles, on both sides of the road. Or later, the humidity brought on by the summer heat while waiting for the bus in the city centre after class, after a festival, too. My friend Demis was sitting on the hot asphalt smoking a cigarette, Roxani was singing “Son of a Preacher Man” while absent-mindedly picking leaves off the bush behind us. About the old photographs γιαγιά kept in an old shoe box in the closet, she took it out from time to time, she would re-tell the same old stories with her eyes glistening each time. Mine glisten too now that she is gone and the old shoe box is mine, her memories all mine. Καλώς τηνα την πέρδικα, she said, that was me, I was the πέρδικα.
The exhibition is supported by Frame Contemporary Art Finland, Arts Promotion Centre Finland, and the City of Vantaa.
Photographs by Marios Karydis and Panagiotis Voulgaris.
“Kävellä ja kaatua” (Walking and Falling), Galleria Theodor, 10.–29.5.2022
A collection of hand-printed monotype stories about youth, love, friendship, and belonging.
The massive olive tree is older than me. Not quite in our yard, but very much wanting to be, always pushing branches and leaves onto our side. Once a year παππούς would put a bedsheet under it and get all the neighbourhood kids to climb up and shake down the olives. He did it for the kids, not so much for the olives, it was fun, and he indulged us.
One spring, παππούς put up a treehouse onto that same olive tree. He didn’t tell us first, one day the house was just there. He was always spontaneous like that, crafting makeshift furniture and makeshift treehouses out of old scraps of wood. More fun for my siblings he probably thought, as they were much younger than me and enjoyed playing Tarzan and Jane, jumping from the balcony onto the treehouse using an old towel for a liana. If only our mother knew! A broken shin and a few loose teeth revealed their secret, but the treehouse stayed up. Times were different then, and bones were meant to be broken.
I loved the treehouse, too, in my teenage way, full of angst and happiness and nights spent outdoors, in a house in an olive tree, with my friends, smoking my first cigarette, fuck it, my first spliff too, παππούς smelled it but never told my parents.
As the years passed, one by one me and my siblings moved away from home, and other kids camped in our treehouse, and shared secrets and first cigarettes and first kisses.
One year I went back home for spring break to find that the City Council had remodeled the park outside our house and cut down the olive tree, treehouse and all. A year later, παππούς passed away. My family thought it strange how much I missed him and still do. There was something about him not unlike that treehouse: uncomplicated, forgiving, and fun. When he was angry, everyone knew; when he was happy, his deep laughter would echo around the block. When the weather was rich and humid, the olive tree would shower us with stink bugs.
The olive tree didn’t give up albeit the Council’s efforts to tame it, and is, once again, almost reaching our balcony.
”Have you ever been told that you are too emotional, too dramatic, too sensitive? Maybe just too much? I think you are perfect. I want you to feel safe. Cry if you need to. Tell me anything, I will not judge. Be sentimental. Be radical, just like that. Tell me who you miss, where you’d like to be right now, whom you loved back in 2007. Don’t be scared. Times are changing, it’s our turn now. I’ll go first. See, it’s okay.”
I started the The Nostalgia EP during the month of February 2021 on the ViCCA student takeover Instagram account. The ongoing project is about sharing stories of my life history, as I remember them. As I felt that I only scraped the surface of my memories, I decided to give the project the space it needs at @thenostalgiaep on Instagram.
In my work, I focus on nostalgia: I believe the things I miss are integral to my identity. I look back with much emotion. I am overly dramatic and much too sensitive. I have tried to hide it in order to be taken seriously, but I believe it shouldn’t have to be this way – for me or for anyone. Thus, I try to set myself as an example.
Our emotions and personal, subjective stories are important. There is nothing embarrassing in them, and we should change the patriarchal way of separating them from the public sphere. One does not have to be strong or man up to be significant, and we should create safe spaces for everyone to show their weakness. Our true selves should do just fine.
“The first time was in 1997. Roxanne and I had checked Athinorama (a free guide of things to do, eat and see in Athens which, back in the 90s I trusted blindly) and had picked the best sounding spot for our Friday night. Nick Cave had been a frequent visitor in the past, according to the guide, and that sounded more than good enough for us. We took a taxi from Roxanne’s flat to the start of Ippokratous Street, close enough, we knew the area. We were very excited, the way one can only be at 16, and it took us quite some time to realise that we had been walking around the same narrow, winding streets and climbing up the same steep steps more than once. Eventually we realised that we were lost, but as we felt that we owned the streets and we owned the city, we did not worry. Our laughter became louder and our voices more high-pitched, as we kept running around in our Dr. Martens boots. Suddenly, from a balcony above, someone threw a bucket of water at us. ‘Shut up!’ the woman shouted as we kept on laughing, now completely soaked. We decided to hop on a taxi and go somewhere else. Between that first time and the last, on New Year’s Eve 2007, many nights were spent at Club Decadence, many friends made. I remember sitting on the steps outside, smoking, often making out with someone I had just met, what amazing, beautiful people they all were.”
In my current work, I draw from my nostalgic memories of my youth in Athens. In my memories teenage emotions are intertwined with music, bands, and the streets and clubs of Athens. The imagery refers to Greece and clubs and bars in 1990s’ Athens. I am no longer a teenager, although I often wish I was – to once again reach the immediacy, naivety and purity of those experiences. My memories don’t fully represent my youth, but on the other hand, they also contain something more. When I take my current spouse from Finland to Athens to see the old hoods while simultaneously sharing my stories with them, I try to share my identity – as we all do, of course. Nostalgia associated with specific places, people, and events is part of my identity.
My warmest thanks to Grafia − Association of Visual Communication Designers in Finland, Arts Promotion Centre Finland and Aalto University for the support.
My exhibition “After Wave” takes place in Galleria K, Tikkurila between the 7th of November and the 1st of December 2019. The opening is on the 6th of November from 5pm. The exhibition makes up the sixth part of a series of exhibitions in which escapism, as symbolised by the sea, is a central theme. The sea represents a way out. These exhibitions are romanticised mental images of seascapes and ships, and an escapistic desperation is present in them. The need to get away from demands, disappointments and threats is suffocating. There is no proper escape plan, but the sea is open. In the earlier exhibitions the sea was a more abstract symbol, but the places in “After Wave” are more concrete and, thus, more personal. The ships are gone; mentally, the coast has been reached and one is finally able to breathe. Still, it is merely make-believe. The exhibition is about a hopeless longing that has a bitter undertone. The imagery is beautiful but there is a crack in it.
In addition to the sea element, the pictures include references to Greece in the form of oleanders and drawn landscapes from the island Amorgos. My father is Greek, and I have lived in Greece for most part of my childhood. Greece is one part of me, and the imagery related to it raises strong feelings that I try to carry with me while in Finland. Especially now that I have children, I feel I cannot lose this part of myself that is often left in the background while living in Finland. How will I be able to pass a whole culture to my children by myself? I have never been stuck in the past nor have I stayed put for long, but new histories have to be built on the old. What was must not be wasted. Only recently have I started to understand the significance of roots. I believe that other people who have moved away from their home region can identify with my experience. Those who have left their home have a strong need to preserve and perform their identity that is a central part of their background. At the same time, the counterforces of the new environment try to pull them another way.
Comics, sequences, seriality, narrativity and stories have been recurring themes in my art for a long time. In my recent art, I have also researched simplification and repetition. I intend to say a lot with small gestures.
My warmest thanks to Grafia − Association of Visual Communication Designers in Finland, Lumoan and the City of Vantaa for their support.
Photographs by Aava Eronen.
5.2.- 1.3.2019
Café Bar No 9
AVAJAISET – VERNISSAGE – OPENING
5.2. KLO - KL 17-19 / 5-7 PM
TERVETULOA – VÄLKOMMEN – WELCOME
Taidegraafikko Athanasía Aarniosuon On Some Faraway Beach -näyttely on nimetty Brian Enon haikeankauniin kappaleen mukaan, ja se käsittelee koti-ikävää, muistojen epätäydellisyyttä ja haaveilua.
Näyttelyn vedokset esittävät kiviä, jotka toimivat haaveilun paikkana. Ne herättävät mielikuvia kaukaisista rannoista, joihin paeta. Todellisuudessa kivet ovat kotoisin Lutrákin rannalta, lapsuuden kesistä muistuttava lahja taiteilijan isältä. Kivet yhtä aikaa aiheuttavat koti-ikävää ja osoittavat muistamisen mahdottomuuden. Läheltä tarkasteltaessa kivien tunnepitoinen viittaussuhde katoaa ja kivistä tulee neutraali pinta, uurteita, muotoja ja sävyjä. Kun kivi muuttuu teokseksi, myös suhde siihen muuttuu: kiven konnotoima ranta voi olla mikä tahansa ranta, kaipuu mikä tahansa kaipuu.
Athanasía Aarniosuo on Suomessa asuva ja työskentelevä taiteilija, joka työskentelyllään haluaa uudistaa taidegrafiikan perinnettä. Usein toistuvia teemoja Aarniosuon taiteessa ovat valo ja vesi, erityisesti ihmisen suhde veteen. Aarniosuon teoksia on ollut esillä useissa yksityis- ja yhteisnäyttelyissä Suomessa ja ulkomailla.
Anna Jensen & Emma Suominen
Ysibaarin näyttelykuraattorit
artists.bar9@gmail.com
Photographs by Aava Eronen.
1. Untitled, framed monotype, 2018
2. Untitled, framed monotype, 2018
3. The Ship Song, 10 framed monotypes, 2018
4. Untitled, framed monotype, 2018
5. I Felt Homesick So My Dad Brought Me a Bag Full of Pebbles from the Beach Where I Used to Swim as a Child, installation, monotypes, a wood shelf, pebbles, 2018
6. When It’s Dark I Remember This View, installation, overheard projector, photograph on acetate, 2018
7. Untitled, framed monotype, 2018
8. The Big Ship, 16 framed monotypes, 2018
Photographs by Aava Eronen.
I Think It Will Be All Right, animation, 2018
The Ship Song, monotype, 2018
