About the exhibition
The exhibition features works by ten visual artists and illustrators, who have been selected as representatives of the most innovative, expressive and multifaceted aspects of contemporary Finnish picture-book art. These artists challenge the form of what a picture book is in experimental ways. Together, they form a collective of voices and styles, with each image speaking its own unique language, yet all communicating the same human themes of friendship, imagination, identity and the landscape of emotions. You will find the playful and the serious, the dreamlike and the everyday; images that bring children and adults closer together through the universal language of art.
The visual storytelling in picture books and graphic novels is a distinct element of The Nordic Watercolour Museum’s activities. The museum strives to highlight the unique nature of the picture book as an art form and its unique capability to reach people of all ages – regardless of their language, cultural background and life circumstances.
Sweden and Finland have an interwoven history and Finnish is one of the five national minority languages in Sweden. Picture books, and this exhibition, invite discussion across the horizon of language and boundaries – a space where images can communicate, and where stories open doors to both inner and outer worlds.
Participating artists
Linda Bondestam, Jenni Erkintalo, Lena Frölander-Ulf, Edith Hammar, Maija Hurme, Erika Kallasmaa, Jenny Lucander, Laura Merz, Sanna Pelliccioni and Maria Sann.
Exhibition production team
Johanna Stenback, Concept producer, Mia-Irene Sundqvist, Exhibition designer and Jenny Ingman, Exhibition dramaturg.
