Sunlight burns blue traces on the paper, images of the memories I have collected as I wander. They are photographs and eco-facts, endeavors to cling to a moment and place. By repeating my childhood manners of looking for shapes and spending time, I feel a familiar joy of discovery. I used to collect four-leaf clovers under my grandma’s garden table.
You can swim far into the middle of the lake from the dock at the summer cottage. Below the surface of the dark water plants form a fibrous wall. The stems of the underwater weeds are slimy. If you swim amongst them and accidentally touch the viscous veil, there is an instant desire to get back. I still only swim to where the plants begin.
One of my earliest memories is from a trip to Denmark with my family. I was four years old, it was a cold summer and we were walking on the beach. I saw sand dunes for the first time and inquired about them. My father explained, but I don’t remember his answer. Whenever I see sand dunes in my adult life I think about that moment on the beach and I deeply believe that I understand what I am looking at.
– Anna Niskanen
Anna Niskanen is a visual artist from Helsinki, and she graduated from Aalto University Photography degree programme in 2017. Her works are prints and sculptures based on photography. There are digital stages in her work, but the results rely on traditional analog ways of printing photographs. Cyanotype is an old photographic process in which a photosensitive emulsion is applied to a surface, exposed to sunlight, and washed with water.
In recent years, Niskanen has held numerous exhibitions in Finland and abroad: for example Lianzhou Foto Festival and Mänttä Art Festival in 2019, as well as solo exhibitions at the Porvoo Art Hall, Huuto and the Islensk Grafik Gallery. This year she participated in a group exhibition at the Wäinö Aaltonen Museum and the national “Whose Nature?” photography project.
Her works are in the Finnish State Art Deposit collection, placed in the Ministry for Foreign Affairs. She is also a founding member of Kosminen artspace.
Some of the works in the exhibition have been produced at artist residencies in SÍM in Reykjavík and FIDA in Copenhagen. The exhibition is supported by Arts Promotion Centre Finland, the Finnish Cultural Foundation, the FIDA program, The Finnish Cultural Institute in Denmark, and Fonden FABRIKKEN for Kunst og Design.
