The Summer at Haihatus is a Celebration
– Contemporary art and indie music in the idyllic summer landscapes of Lake Finland
Haihatus Art Center celebrates a richly programmed 25th anniversary summer in Joutsa, Central Finland. Our locations are conveniently situated right by Highway 4 (E75), making it easy to reach us. The summer art offerings consist of four different exhibitions, three of which are located within Haihatus’ charming courtyard, its galleries, and sculpture park. The fourth exhibition is located a couple of kilometers away from Haihatus: at Finland’s only gallery specialized in kinetic, or moving, art, the KITA Gallery.
In the exhibitions of the celebratory summer, current and engaging themes are addressed through contemporary art. The exhibition sections not only present unprecedented discoveries but also works by artists who have been at Haihatus over the years, as well as ITE (outsider) art, which traces back to Haihatus’ roots, representing contemporary folk art.
The summer exhibitions bring together a unique collection of different artistic approaches and works from artists with diverse backgrounds. Haihatus aims to celebrate everyone’s right to art by making visible perspectives and realities that we are not accustomed to experiencing in the mainstream.
The summer exhibitions offer plenty to see and experience
HAIHATUS25, @ Haihatus from June 15th to August 25th, 2024
In the 25th anniversary HAIHATUS25 art summer exhibition at Haihatus, there is a wide range of works by Finnish and international contemporary artists.
The HAIHATUS25 group exhibition in the gallery house showcases new contemporary art featuring diverse forms of artwork: paintings, sculptures, photographs, short films, graphics, and works realized in virtual reality. The summer exhibition offers a unique view into various aspects of contemporary art, curated by Elham Rahmati, Ali Akbar Mehta, Jenna Jauhiainen, and Julius Valve. The group exhibition opening will take place on Friday, July 15, 2024 (featuring performances by the MYÖS collective).
The artists in this exhibition seek to confront and challenge the tendencies and trajectories shaping the world today. Through this exhibition, they provoke and facilitate critical, timely conversations centred on the intersections of identity, self-image, equality, systemic, structural racial injustice, and discrimination based on ethnicity, class, religion, sexual orientation, and gender, among other things. More broadly, the lasting events that have shaped the past few years and beyond—from the pandemic to the reckoning around anti-coloniality and racial justice—make this exhibition’s conversations and voices more salient now than ever.
Celebrating the 25th anniversary of Taidelaitos Haihatus, the HAIHATUS25 -exhibition is a relevant marker of conversations brought forward from spaces traditionally left on the margins in contemporary art’s national and international contexts. What constitutes the ‘margins’? And who gets to calculate, measure or communicate, with any precise method, the marginality of any lived experience? The centre-margins relationship cannot be understood as a fixed, in a straight line, or as binary, but as hierarchies and power dynamics rooted in geopolitics and social relations, and must be articulated as such.
HAIHATUS25 ARTISTS:
Sheung Yiu
Bogna Luiza Wisniewska
Sakari Vinko
Minni Välipakka
Alma Tuuva (@pikakahvimemegirl)
Lada Suomenrinne
Juliana Irene Smith
Azar Saiyar
Samra Šabanovic
Golrokh Nafisi
Bruno Moreschi
Adnan Mirza
Jade Lönnqvist
Jenni Laiti
Gülbeden Kulbay
Minjee Hwang Kim
Anna Karima
August Joensalo
Nayab Noor Ikram
Gabrielė Gervickaitė
Paola Fernanda Guzmán Figueroa
Piergiorgio Colone
Camille Auer
Uzair Amjad
Joss Allen
Read more about the exhibition from this link.
The Jubilee – 25 Years of Haihatus celebrates Haihatus' history and sense of community
In the Jubilee – 25 Years of Haihatus exhibition section, there is an independent exhibition space built within the Haihatus courtyard and Fantasia House, bringing together previous Haihatus artists, new creators, and community art. The courtyard art collection is a surprising and inspiring blend of contemporary art and self-taught ITE (outsider) art amidst the beautiful countryside scenery.
Voimametsä is a low-threshold community art concept developed at Haihatus. It is a developing entity within Haihatus’s courtyard aimed at creating well-being in the everyday lives of people at risk of social exclusion, those in vulnerable social situations, individuals in institutional care, and people living as refugees, through participatory art-making.
The Jubilee exhibition is curated by Risto Puurunen and Panu Ollikainen, along with the artistic director of the community art project Voimametsä, Kaisa Vigman.
“In the Jubilee exhibition, we’ll see artists from throughout Haihatus’s 25-year history. The ITE art field donated by Vesa Väänänen will be restored to its former glory. In Voimametsä, Jaakko Autio‘s community art piece will feature local residents of Joutsa and Ukrainian refugees living in Joutsa singing together,” Puurunen describes.
JUBILEE ARTISTS:
Raimo Auvinen & Merja Metsänen
Martina Buck
Veli Gränö
Hilma Harju
Heikki “Morgan” Hämäläinen
Johanna Juvonen & Biagio Rosa
Tero Jartti
Marko Kaiponen & Katja Öhrnberg
Ella Keihäsniemi
Mauri Korhonen
Virpi Lehto
Tia Matikainen
Kari Mutenia
Pasi Mälkiä
Ben Nozrachev
Lempi Peltonen
Markku Pennanen
Kalle Turakka Purhonen
Pauliina Turakka Purhonen
Vesa Väänänen
VOIMAMETSÄ (Power Forest) ARTISTS:
Jaakko Autio
Santiago Delgado
Anna Miller
Eija Peltola
Daniela dos Reis
Aino Säävälä
Allianssi
Helperi
Joutsa Comprehensive School
"Invisibility" at the KITA Gallery from June 14th to August 25th, 2024
Haihatus’s offerings also include the Kinetic Art House KITA, established in 2022, located right next to Highway 4. The specialized gallery in kinetic art presents a summer exhibition this year with the theme “Invisibility.” The artworks spread from the gallery’s roof all the way to the waterfront. The two-story house continuously adapts to the needs of kinetic contemporary art and artists. The artists invited to the summer 2024 exhibition are Elisa Hillgen, Mari Hokkanen, Marianne Kurki, Antti Kytömäki, Mimosa Pale, Marloes Van Son, Kestutis Svirnelis, and KITA Gallery’s artistic director and exhibition curator, Tuomo Vuoteenoma.
The opening of the KITA Gallery will take place on Friday, June 14, 2024.
Read more about the “Invisibility” exhibition at the KITA Gallery from this link.
Indie music and performing arts amidst an idyllic countryside setting
Haihatus organizes the already iconic MusaSunnuntai concerts, perfect for the whole family, bringing the most intriguing names in Finnish indie music to “the Haiha stage”. Enjoy the picnic-like atmosphere of the concerts under the large oak tree in Haihatus’s courtyard, and experience the most relaxed MusaSunnuntai conserts of the summer in great company!
During the Joutopäivä Weekend, the hayrack alley next to Haihatus leads to a pink tent, where you’ll find the new rotating SLURPS stage. SLURPS mini-festivals, offering contemporary art, will take place in four cities during the summer of 2024: Kajaani, Joutsa, Kuopio, and Pori. SLURPS builds light production methods for the art field and creates alternative economies using their own currency, called “nanna.”
Haihatus’s multidisciplinary summer offers something to see and experience all day long. Stop by for a day or spend an entire cultural weekend in this unique art environment, taking advantage of nearby accommodation services. Did you know that buses coming from the south and north stop right next to the KITA Gallery? So, you can easily arrive for an art trip directly from Helsinki, for example, without your own car. You can also borrow a bicycle from us for the journey between the KITA Gallery and Haihatus, making your trip even smoother.
Upcoming Events:
- FRI 14.6. Opening of the summer exhibition at KITA Gallery (free admission)
- SAT 15.6. Opening of the summer exhibition at Haihatus (free admission)
- June 15th to August 25th, 2024: Jubilee Summer Exhibitions at Haihatus & KITA, open Wed-Sun from 11 am to 6 pm (Tickets 15/10/5)
- FRI-SAT July 5th-6th: Slurps – A new contemporary art stage visits the field next to Haihatus
(Payment method: “Kansankeittiö”)
*Slurps FRI July 5th, from 5 pm to 10 pm
*Slurps SAT July 6th, from 12 pm to 7 pm
- SUN July 7th: MusaSunnuntai: Jukka Nousiainen trio, Rütmi-Sepot, DJ Muovisorvaamo
From 6 pm to 10 pm
(Pre-sale tickets 20/15, at the gate 22/17)
Afterparty @Kellari: APROX. (Free admission)
- SUN July 14th: MusaSunnuntai: Lyyti, Hehewuti, DJ Muovisorvaamo
From 6 pm to 10 pm
(Pre-sale tickets 20/15, at the gate 22/17)
Afterparty @Kellari: Varpuset (Free admission)
- SAT July 20th: Kylän Juuret visits Haihatus: Gallows Dance, Hirvikoira Hirvonen, and Uncle Wormwood
(Pre-sale tickets 20/15, at the gate 22/17)
Afterparty @Kellari: Faarao Pirttikangas
- SUN July 28th: MusaSunnuntai: Eläkeläiset, Muovipussi, DJ Muovisorvaamo
(Pre-sale tickets 25/20, at the gate 27/22)
From 6 pm to 10 pm
Afterparty @Kellari: Rokki-Mari (Free admission)
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