The artists featured in Snowball Effect 2021 are Markku Akseli Heikkilä (1959, Rovaniemi), Riikka Keränen (1984, Ristijärvi), Sanna Krook (1976, Oulu), Kirsti Muinonen (1943, Oulu), Johanna Pöykkö (1977, Oulu), Eija Ranta (1980, Hailuoto) and the artist couple Raisa Raekallio (1978 and 1979, Kittilä) and Misha del Val.
Featuring photography, painting, location-specific sculptures, moving images and motion, Snowball Effect 2021 takes over the galleries on the first floor of the Oulu Museum of Art. Connecting, overarching themes include coming together, coexistence, materiality, location, passing of time, and motion.
The big gallery on the first floor of the museum teems with the full variety and endless play of shared lives. Kirsti Muinonen’s paintings and Riikka Keränen’s sculptures imagine potential worlds and scrutinise the connections that define the world around us. In the paintings of Raisa Raekallio and Misha del Val creatures coming from different backgrounds and starting points come together in shared situations, while the textile installation by Johanna Pöykkö evokes childhood games and safe places.
The works displayed in Tasku and Gallery C are meditations on the fundaments of human existence and the traces we leave in the world. The Tasku gallery features a series of photographs shot by Sanna Krook in the industrial town of Pattijoki and the nearby Raahe steelworks that focus on the sense of home and the role of the human beings as the shaper of their environment. Gallery C is shared between Markku Heikkilä and Eija Ranta, both artists of temporary circumstances and explorers of time and memory. Heikkilä’s photographs are documents of artworks created in nature, while Ranta’s motion artworks take place in the spectator’s body, memories and motion.
Snowball Effect is an exhibition that showcases contemporary art from North Finland. The artists are selected through an open call for applications, and the final selections are made by an invited curator. The regional exhibition has been arranged in rotation by the art museums of Oulu, Rovaniemi and Kemi and the Aine Art Museum in Tornio since 2012. The 2021 exhibition is curated by Pauliina Leikas, whose merits include working as the head of the Mustarinda Association in the Eastern Finland province of Kainuu.
