Visiting Art/ist 2023: Isabella Chydenius | The potential of club corners

ART EXHIBITION as part of the Visiting Art/ist programme.

Thu 1.6.2023 | 5.30 pm   Exhibition walkthrough with Isabella Chydenius. In English and German.

The Visiting Art/ist programme was launched by the Finnland-Institut in 2015. For this project, primarily Finnish artists living in Germany, Austria or Switzerland are chosen whose works leave a strong impression on us. Our Visiting Artist in 2023 is Isabella Chydenius.

Isabella Chydenius is an interdisciplinary artist, whose works have been exhibited in numerous galleries and art institutions around the world. She was born in Kristinestad, Finland in 1988, and currently lives and works between Berlin and Helsinki. Chydenius left Finland in 2007 and initially attained a BA in Textiles, Patternmaking and Womens- and Menswear Design from Istituto Marangoni in Paris in 2011, after which she settled in London and worked for the fashion houses Erdem, Vivienne Westwood and Jonathan Saunders before returning to fine arts in 2013. Thereafter she moved to Cape Town, while participating in artist residencies and workshops in upstate New York, Los Angeles and Johannesburg, as well as Reykjavík, Munich and Berlin since moving back to Europe in 2021. During her time in South Africa, she completed a Master of Fine Art degree with distinction at the Michalis School of Fine Art at the University of Cape Town in April 2021; a month before the German government acknowledged nightclubs as cultural institutions. This supports her research arguments of the importance of club culture and its historical and current dialogue with contemporary underground as well as pop culture, socio-political movements and art history. Chydenius is a member of MUU Artist Association, FLASH (The Finnish Light Art Society Helsinki), Helsinki International Artist Association and the Helsinki-based contemporary art podcast collective ArtPod. Chydenius‘ work has been supported by both Finnish and international art grants, such as the Paulo Foundation, the Arts Promotion Centre Finland, Frame Contemporary Art Finland, Föreningen Konstsamfundet, Svenska kulturfonden, Nygréns Stiftelse, the Jules Kramer Scholarship and the City of Munich Arts and Culture Department.

Isabella Chydenius considers nightclubs being less curated places of urban culture, unlike museums and galleries. In her ongoing artistic research, she focuses on exploring the potential, but also the risks of urban nightclub culture within the context of our heteropatriarchal time. The Visiting Art/ist exhibition at the Finnland-Institut contains new artworks reflecting nightclubs as safer spaces and places of belonging. In Chydenius’ light sculptures, the colour pink plays an evident roll.

The exhibition is curated by Mika Minetti. The catalogue (3,5 MB, free to download) published for the exhibition includes a large number of illustrations and text contributions by Mika Minetti and Christine Nippe. You can order the book for 10 EUR plus postage at the Finland-Institut: tel. +49 30 403631890; email: info@institut.de.

 

Blog interview: “I’ve always been a night owl”