Hannaleena Heiska

During the 2009 edition of Momentum, Finnish artist Hannaleena Heiska displayed seven of her paintings from the series, Not of this World and we are given the opportunity to experience her works again during Momentum10.

Hannaleena Heiska has chosen titles of songs for the series and each of the paintings. Music has a significant meaning to Heiska who referenced memories from the black metal music scene of her youth as a source of inspiration for the imagery. The animals in the paintings are framed by a terrestrial atmosphere and were chosen intuitively and for different reasons by Heiska. They are accessorized with masks and tattoos that give their human-like features a supernatural and majestic aura. Hannaleena Heiska shares with us a contemporary narrative that is her own private mythology.

BIOGRAPHY
Hannaleena Heiska (b. 1973, Oulu, Finland) graduated from the Department of Painting at the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts in 2006. She was one of the artists nominated for the biggest art prize in Finland, the Ars Fennica, in 2011. Heiska has exhibited internationally, for example, at the 4th Ural Industrial Biennial, Yekaterinburg, Russia, 2017; Gothenburg Art Museum, Gothenburg, 2015; Espace Louis Vuitton Gallery, Tokyo 2012; and the CAC – Contemporary Art Centre, Vilnius, Lithuania 2010. Heiska’s works are represented in many significant public collections, such as Gothenburg Museum of Art, Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, Helsinki, and EMMA – Espoo Museum of Modern Art. Her videoworks have been shown at numerous film and media-art festivals in Europe. Her film Today We Live won first prize in the Helsinki Short Film Festival in 2013.

Artist web site