A pillow fort & other soft things by the Young Artist of the Year and Backlight’23 – Cruel Radiance open at Tampere Art Museum

The Young Artist of the Year 2023 Eetu Huhtala – a pillow fort and other soft things

Eetu Huhtala’s conceptual creations are based on workaday objects and technical devices that function contrary to expectations and reason, with no objective. Important things seem to be going on in the works, but in actual fact the process is purposeless.

Huhtala’s works express the consumption and wastage of energy and resources. They reflect the human world of experience beside everyday objects that belong to the contemporary scientific, technological and consumer society. The human being strives for certain goals, but often matters do not progress but rather fail and bring disappointment, the feeling that in the end the effort is futile. Society wastes a plethora of its resources, or they are misdirected and pointless.

Backlight’23 – Cruel Radiance

What kind of evidentiary power can we associate with images in a world where man-made crises and conflicts have long since exceeded human proportions? How does matter, our material and elementary surroundings, record evidence of violence? What kind of roles do such non-human visual actors have in bearing witness to our pernicious actions?

From the omnipresence of particle pollution to the lasting legacies of nuclear weapons, from sub-zero temperatures to the residues of the mining industry, the exhibition sheds light on a whole variety of material elements as visual actors with singular testimonial capacities. The curators of the exhibition are Harri Pälviranta and Marko Karo.

The exhibition is part of Backlight, the international photo festival which has been organized since 1987 by Photographic Centre Nykyaika.

The Young Artist of the Year 2023 Eetu Huhtala – a pillow fort &  other soft things Backlight’23: Cruel Radiance 17.6.–15.10.2023 Tampereen taidemuseo