Meet the Artists of the Next Summer Exhibition “Wonder”
The nationally renowned contemporary art summer exhibition called Wonder will open to the public on Saturday, 28th of June, 2025 at the Art Center Haihatus in Joutsa. The co-curated exhibition features works by 22 artists. Wonder is a carefully woven ensemble of their ideas and artistic expression, nurturing childlike curiosity, hope, and light.
website | Photo: Andy Best
Andy Best is a sculptor, lecturer, and Professor of Sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts, University of the Arts in Helsinki, while Merja Puustinen is a visual artist, producer, and doctoral researcher at the same academy. As media and visual artists, Best and Puustinen specialize in provocative interventions within gallery, museum, and urban spaces.
Their work often explores societal themes in a physical and playful manner. Since 1992, they have also worked with video, photography, performance, media, and robotics. The artist duo was even awarded Finland’s first-ever State Award for Media Art in 1998. In addition to their artistic practice, Puustinen and Best also work as curators and producers for large-scale international projects. The latest of these is Imagining Godzilla, a Baltic Sea project taking place from 2024 to 2026 aboard a sailing vessel, involving around 50 international artists.
Deniz Satir is a visual artist from Istanbul, currently living in Helsinki. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Law and is currently studying in the Sculpture department at the Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki. She likes to work with soft materials – with the theme of “soft materials vs. tradition” – creating installations that explore social and political themes as well as self-destructiveness through color, humor, and coziness.
Photo: Tarja Petrell
Edwina Goldstone (Master of Fine Art, 2008) is a multidisciplinary artist, living and working in Riihimäki since 1994. Goldstone has exhibited in both national and international exhibitions and art festivals. Her works combine a variety of disciplines, from sculptural installations to painting, drawing, live art, and socially engaged art projects. She is known for incorporating found objects rich with personal history and cultural significance into her work.
Henriikka Kivelä sees paintings as more than just images; they offer a momentary entry into something deeper – an inner space and a surrounding presence. They are lived moments and emotions that emerge on the canvas during the painting process, through brushstrokes and, ultimately, through the gaze of the viewer. As the paintings drift between abstraction and representation, the viewer is given space to sense, feel, and linger in their own inner dialogue or silence. The works are painted directly onto canvas using ink, in a manner reminiscent of watercolor painting.
Photo: Niina Lehtonen Braun
“The frequency of love is 528 Hz.
I wonder if it’s age or a phase in life when one starts to get interested in particles, frequencies, and radiation. Then again, I’ve always been sensitive to scents, smells, indoor air quality, and the different ‘vibes’ of people and places. I now admit this also as a visual artist.”
Ilona Valkonen brings a durational monument to Wonder, centered around decomposition and the reorganization of matter. Her partners in this process are a pair of scissors and an oyster mushroom mycelium.
I. A. Jääskeläinen, living in Helsinki, is a comic and media artist, game and music producer, and plays in a band. He describes himself as a “Jack of all trades, master of none”. He has been observed to show symptoms causally indoctrinated by bites from “retro bugs”, such as DVD collecting, Amiga game productions, or programming dead microprocessors.
“The harnessing of computers for the manipulation of humankind was already seen as a threat in the ’80s. That’s where it all began.”
Joonas Ahtikallio is a photographer and sound artist from Jyväskylä. His work combines experimental techniques with playful curiosity. Rooted in a dialogue between exploration, unpredictability and sensitivity, his works invite viewers to see the world differently – slower and with greater curiosity.
Juha Saraste has had a long career as a saxophonist, singer, and lyricist in numerous punk rock bands. Today, he works as a landscaping professional in Akaa and, during the winter months, as a scrap metal sculptor. He is a self-taught artist with no formal education in art or metal work. Saraste creates animal sculptures from recycled materials. Until now, he has held five solo exhibitions and has also participated in group exhibitions in Finland and Scotland.
Instagram | Photo: Niina Vehmaa
Jukka Silokunnas is a media artist unrestricted by materials, who has loved two things since childhood: breaking things and making a mess. As a child, these habits often got him into trouble – nowadays, not so much. He despises materiality and seeks a state in which even the last bonds between atoms have been broken. However, natural entropy is too slow a process for the impatient Silokunnas, so he has decided to become a force of nature himself.
Instagram | website
Photo: Patrick Morarescu
Justyna Koeke has studied sculpture in Poland and Germany. She primarily works as a performer in public spaces or as a costume and stage designer. She plays bass in the band called Akademische Betriebskapelle and makes equipment for the band. Thematically, she deals with current political and social issues.
In Kim Somervuori’s works, the traditions of graffiti and high art meet in a tangible way. The combination of diverse cultural references makes his art multifaceted and full of surprises. A piece can take the form of a mural, a three-dimensional object, an installation, or something that at least seemingly follows the logic of a traditional painting. For Somervuori, the central focus as an artist lies in exploring the transformations of different landscapes – both urban environments and interior spaces.
Instagram | website
Photo: Satu Tenhonen
Marja Patrikainen draws inspiration from dreams, the mythologies of various cultures, and pop culture. The aesthetics of indigenous and outsider art as well as material choices strongly influence her work. Her sculptures act as messengers from an imagined reality, expressing concern about contemporary phenomena. Art researcher Kari Yli-Annala describes Patrikainen’s works: “The pieces reach out to the viewer as if from the twilight zone – figures emerging from the mythopoetics of the collective subconscious.”
Nora Sederlöf is a visual artist from Helsinki with professional qualifications in fashion design and costume sewing. Sederlöf’s works consist of sculptures and sculptural installations. The pieces are made of metal structures covered with various textiles. While the overall form is abstract, the details bring narrative and layered meaning to the works. Her pieces feature recognizable elements that she modifies, processes, and combines in unique ways.
website | Photo: Pekka Tallqvist
Oona Tikkaoja is a visual artist interested in collaboration with a wide variety of people and animals. Currently, she is working on a community-based school art project in Kaarina, as well as offering open art courses under the name “Kulttuurieläin” (“Animal of Culture”) together with her dogs and horses. Tikkaoja’s previous works include the community sculpture trail Olin täällä / Jag var här (“I Was Here”) on the Tuusulanjärvi campus, the Unelma (“Dream”) sculpture at Sitratori in Helsinki, and Papu (“Bean”), a playful sculpture in Kupittaa Park, Turku, created in collaboration with an artist group.
Suvi Vepsä is a doctoral researcher in art history at the University of Turku. In her research, she explores the potential of multispecies art to envision new ways of being, doing, and knowing amid today’s ecological and ethical-political challenges. She is interested in care, nurturing, and various forms of collaboration — both as relational dynamics that define and sustain multispecies coexistence and as guiding practices in art and research.
Photo: Annina Mannila
Risto Puurunen is a self-taught musician and visual artist who builds both his instruments and artworks from scrap materials and wire. His artistic work includes kinetic Camera Obscura installations as well as immersive spatial pieces utilizing light, shadows, and 3D glasses.
He is best known as a member of the band called Cleaning Women, with which he has performed internationally, composed silent films live, and made music for documentaries. The band will release a new album next autumn, launching them into new adventures. Puurunen is also a key figure at Haihatus, where he is part of the management team, active in the supporting association, and owns the properties and land managed by the association.
Suvi Vasama’s background in puppet theatre is evident in her sculptures which incorporate skills learned through puppetry. The creation process is time-consuming and allows for a wide range of emotions to be experienced. The works are not planned or sketched in advance; instead, they emerge from thoughts that evolve into a dialogue during the working process. The final form of the sculptures is built up through support structures, acrylic paint, and numerous layers of paper.
Tapani Kokko is a sculptor based in Orimattila, whose primary working material is wood. His works are fascinating in the way they play between salon art and folk art. He is also a musician and actor, and has been creating performance art together with his wife Virpi Kanto under the project name Taidevankkuri Linnuntie since 2016.
Veera Kopsala is a visual artist working with sculpture and painting. She creates three-dimensional wooden relief paintings using chisels, an angle grinder, an electric saw, as well as acrylic and watercolor paints. At the core of her work lies corporeality. Kopsala graduated with a Master of Fine Arts from the Academy of Fine Arts, University of the Arts in Helsinki in 2022. Her works are included in collections such as those of the Association for Rural Culture and Education, and the Finnish Art Society. She currently works with a two-year grant from the Kone Foundation.
Ville-Pekka Vihma (Instagram | website) ja Vera den Arend (Instagram | website) are an artist duo graduated from the Kankaanpää Art School and currently based in Kangasniemi. For the summer exhibition, they are joining forces to create a shared installation that intertwines elements from both of their individual works and object compositions into a unified yet mysterious, historically inspired installation.
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