Katja Tukiainen: "I love the balance between innocence and impudence."

Katja Tukiainen, en av utställningens nitton - hör till en av de färgstarka och mest iögonfallande. En vägg, sex gånger sex meter, har stått till hennes förfogande. Resultatet - Mlle Good Heavens Bathes With Karl Marx - är ett möte mellan rosa karamellig kitch och skäggig filosofi. Jag skriver med Tukiainen över Facebook...

Tell me about your first big art experience...
My first big art-experiences was the whole Venice, Uffizi -gallery in Firenze and the Vatican Art Museum in Rome when I was six years old. My parents saved money all the winters and we went every summer to Italy with our 1969 Ford Escort trough the Europe. I read Donald Duck in the back seat and we slept in our tent in camping areas. It was awesome way to mix high and low culture. I love my childhood!

When did you feel certain that you would become an artist and create art yourself?
-My mother is a pharmacist and my father is a priest and psychotherapist. One of my uncles and three of my aunts are artists. So I think I never decided, but it just happened because it had to happen. It was a most normal thing for me. I thank my parents for that. I take care of that side in our family tradition, while my little brother became a pharmacist and a mountain climber. I get high with the sky lifts when I’m working with my wall paintings. In Nordic Watercolour Museum I got the six meters high wall to paint. That is my record, but next summer in Mänttä Art weeks I’ll have seven meters high and 30 meters long wall.

You live and work in Helsinki. What is the art-climate like over there?
-I think art-climate is quite open in Helsinki. Please welcome and have a little bit patience, because we are not so open as Italians but once you get Finnish friends you never get rid of them. I am comparing us to Italians, because I have been studying in Venice and living in small village near Rome. Italians say that I am not like most Finnish, that I am more like Italian, in good and bad. But I think it’s more like something to do with Russian temperament. I am glad that art-climate in Helsinki in getting more and more international. But I also love the feeling that this is such a small city that art scene is like a big family. With its good and bad sides also...

Name a couple of your favourite artists!
-My 13 favourite artist are, in alphabetical order; Atak, Karin Mamma Anderson, Ernst Billgren, Olaf Breuning, Julie Doucet, Anke Feuchtenberger, Matti Hagelberg (Tukiainens äkta hälft!), Jani Leinonen, Yoshitomo Nara, Jockum Nordström, Riiko Sakkinen, Hiroshi Sugito and Karl Tuikkanen.

How do most people react to your work - what do they tell you? How do you WANT people to feel about your work?
-Oh that is awesome how people react to my art. Some people love my art and some people hate my art, but it is hard to find people without an opinion. My works tell about the world around us, but as much my works tell about the viewer him or herself. I love the balance between innocence and impudence. My works seems to affect people in the way that they really reflect their own experiences on my works.

Some people see my works purely cute and innocence and others see them twisted and naughty. The truth is there between, because the world is not black and white. I have been always dealing with this kind of things in my work, but when I was young student I got shamed by the verbal feedback. Now I love the discussions. It’s my pleasure to rise up the questions and opinions. It’s even my function as an artist. My work is my pleasure, and I hope it is your pleasure too. And the pleasure is not just something which is coming from an easiness, it is coming after some struggle and adrenaline peak also.

Women in art, in Finland - how are the women?
-My works are about the world around us from the point of me. And I am a woman, I cannot escape that. When I was a teenage punk rocker in my small home town Kuusankoski, I was glad when people tough I’m a cute boy. After that period I had very feminine 50’s style, when I had my last years in as high school. Then I came to Helsinki to study art and I had not to be anymore so rebel, because in Helsinki I had all the freedom. I have been teaching in India in the human rights comic workshops, and seen the women’s complicate situation there. So you can imagine how I see the women in Finland. We can play with our roles in art and life. With playing I do not mean something light and easy. I mean we can questionnaire the gender in life and art.

Four things that inspire you right now!
-Four things that inspire me right now are my coming exhibitions, my love towards to my family (small and big), Slavoj Žižek and jouissance.

The best show you ever had! And the worst!
-My best show is always the next one. The worst are those which did teach me most. I regret only few exhibitions in my life. They are those where I or somebody else did not give all the enthusiasm. I am very intensive person when I am working. I am mellow at the free time and in my astanga yoga practice.

Now give us an inspiring You Tube-clip to round it up!
-Sure!