P.S.1 MoMA

Cut from Issue 9 / June 2008 Arctic Hysteria Special Issue

Art has the ability to create connections between people, and thus to create new communities, wich in there action can provide new meaningful and unique experiences. Finally, art, with it's histories and traditions, offers an entirety that is much larger than human individual, a place to "join" and "belong in".

These advantegous qualities of art are not only available to those who make art but also to those who give meaning to art in their lives in whatever respect. Anni Rapinoja's works are good example of this. By gently and lightly tackling the process of nature, she opens new possibilities for being – not only through the material in the works but also in the minds of the viewers. By producing cultural objects of desire out of natural materials, she tells about how people work – or more precisely – how people should work constructively in the relationship to their enviroment. The work creates an impression of an object that it is not and sets off an internal search in the viewers, with the purpose of helping to understand this extraordinary situation. In the search they put to use resources that have been missing from their consciousness. The artist creates a bridge between a product and culture and experiences connected with the natural environment, and can entice the viewers to enlarge their framework of interpretation beyond it's former narrow limits. In this process, the experience of beauty is one possibility, but not only as a beauty of culture, as the work borrows it's strength from the moments when a person may have felt a sense of unity and community with nature. On the other hand, Rapinoja's works contain an enormous element of creativity. Creativity, like other qualities closely linked to virtues, has the capacity to persuade a person away from a comparative and analytical mindset and to experience the effects of the virtue. And of course this all coils together with a vision where the human being rest safely in the embrace of nature, which is much larger than any human life, a place where even a person's most spiritual needs can find response.