The Finnish artists included in the 11th Cairo Biennale are Adel Abidin, Eija-Liisa Ahtila, Kaarina Kaikkonen, Lauri Nykopp and Stiina Saaristo.

This year the biennale will be on view from 20 December 2008 through 20 February 2009 and will probe into perceptions of the ‘other' by inviting artists to explore the realms of the other within and without. "The other is no other but myself" - a motto declared and manifested every day in world politics, military strife, clash of civilizations, conflicting ideologies, numerous ethnicities and beliefs. As contemporary art practices today assimilate native and universal cultures and local specificities of history, heritage and legacy, the works in the biennale aim at providing authentic documentations of space and time as well as representations of the artist in her/his social milieu.

In his installation Tasty (2008) Adel Abidin (b. 1973) uses animal metaphors for investigating symbols and how they affect our daily lives. He placed a mosque made of sugar cubes next to an anthill. The ants instantly take to the sweet building, a new space, climbing on its walls, breaking in and demolishing it, and we watch as the swarm of ants gradually gnaws it away. How to take instincts, life, sensations and passions, and transform them into tameable companions? The work reflects the wish for a reality where pleasures and desires would coexist in peace and harmony.

Eija-Liisa Ahtila's (b. 1959) 6-channel installation WHERE IS WHERE? (2008) deals with colonialism and the presence of two different cultures. Its starting point is a real event that took place in Algeria at the end of the 1950s, when Algeria was still under French rule. The situation at the time was extremely violent both because of recurrent assassination attempts by the resistance movement and because of the French government's harsh countermeasures. As once consequence of and reaction to the barbarous acts committed by the French, two Algerian boys, Adel and Ismael, killed their friend, a French boy of the same age. Although the installation's starting points are based in reality, at the heart of the story is the relationship this event has with today's situation. The narrative starts from the present moment, is filtered through an individual person and is gradually interwoven with what the boys did and the events in Algeria. The woman starts, with the aid of words from her profession of poet, to clarify what happened, while also running through elements involved in the event, such as the different religions, guilt and sameness, and a search for what they have in common. The events in the installation take place in a constructed, fictive event reality within the installation and in a theatre-like, referential set.

For the biennale Kaarina Kaikkonen (b. 1952) will realize a version of her installation And It Was Empty (2008). As is the case with this and many of her other works, Kaikkonen builds in situ using discarded objects. When works are brought to public places, they give onlookers an opportunity to break away from the greyness of everyday life, to appreciate that the magic is always there. Kaikkonen's intallations prove that art works do not belong only to concrete reality, they are the spirit personified.

Lauri Nykopp (b. 1957) shows photographs from his Illusions...series (2007-2008) photographed in Paris and in the Nature Parks and wilderness areas of Northern Finland and Norway. The series consists of two sub-series called ‘illusions of pure nature' and ‘illusions of the grandness of man'. The first deals with the nuclear fall-out of the Chernobyl power plant failure and the emissions of the mining activities on Russia's Kuola Peninsula and in Central Europe, and the second examines the long history of Parisian monuments and pompous buildings celebrating the victories and wealth of its leaders, which, according to Nykopp, can only be created and appreciated by "minds gone totally astray of their place on this earth, in a folly bloated by egos".

From Stiina Saaristo (b. 1976) there is a large scale painting entitled Friendship Girls Share III (2003) and two smaller drawings entitled Mommy (2004) and On Clope! (2004). In her works Saaristo analyzes personal feelings, shame, and painful experiences, reworking them into an image which she then endows with general references and symbols. Even if her characters are, to some extent, self-portraits - painted and reanimated with the help of a mirror, they are also fuzzy investigations into the ideas about value and beauty that prevail in our society. At times, these characters also address the issues of sex and equality using black humour. This translates Saaristo's difficult experiences into a form that gives them more universally applicable contexts and distances them from her self and private life.

Further information:

Curator Marita Muukkonen: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , +358 (0)50 575 8504
Curator Ehab-El Laban: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Cairo Biennale: http://www.cairobiennale.gov.eg