Portraits by Essi Kuokkanen, Rauha Mäkilä, and Camilla Vuorenmaa in a Historical Context

In Finland, female painters have a long and continuous tradition. Since the mid-1850s, female Finnish painters have been particularly remarkable, to such an extent that they are highlighted — also in a historical context — in relation to their male colleagues. During the 19th century, the nation’s art schools figured as a central element in the proposed strategy to challenge and work against the intense Russification taking place until independence in 1917. Public art schools were to work towards a nationally founded art, as an element of the general struggle for cultural identity in the years leading towards the liberation from the Russian Empire. These schools accepted both women and men from the get-go, and they worked side by side — and since the founding of the direct predecessor to the Finnish Art Academy (Finsk Kunstforenings Tegneskole) in 1846, the persistent focus on painting has been a notable feature of Finnish contemporary art.

There was a wide-spread ambition amongst these artists to create and develop their work in an international context, motivated further by the lack of recognition and attention they received in their own art scene. Traveling became an obvious alternative to remaining in the national and conservative home context, where male artists dominated. The international perspective of modernism united the female artists with a strong personal expression, resulting in a a notable diversity in the Finnish art scene. It’s interesting to note that figurative painting figured widely both then and now, just as portraits remain a widespread motif throughout the decades. Needless to say that much has happened since the turn of the previous century, but the artists’ work, where an international perspective fuses with an interest for the proximate and the personal, is an interesting parallel.

The portrait-as-motif also runs through the work of Essi Kuokkanen, Rauha Mäkilä, and Camilla Vuorenmaa. Despite significant differences in their painterly starting points, the human figure is a recurring theme in their art. The self-portrait and portraits of others indicate the existential inquiry that runs through each of their work like a red thread. With much self-awareness and width, we encounter interpretations of society that are humorous but also highly expressive.

Essi Kuokkanen

The figures in Essi Kuokkanen’s paintings are vulnerable in their introspective inquiries and actions. Whether it’s the ingestion of a worm or of liquid, toxic garbage that constitutes the precarious situation of her subjects,

There lies beneath the humorous surface a pronounced solemnity and depth. Often, the inquiry into the relationship between human and nature figures as the central theme. Through this, the figures are able to represent specific characters but also overarching narratives interpreted with great insight and sympathy. The figures invade the picture plane and take over the space around them; they fill it out in their insistence of their place within it—concretely and metaphorically, just as they dare to turn their vulnerability towards us, the audience. The figuration that materializes through grand, amorphous strokes that characterizes Kuokkanen’s more abstract paintings finds an origin in surrealism, and carries its tradition of female artists securing central positions in the art world in greater numbers.