New public artworks completed to the delight of day care and school children in Helsinki

Three new public artworks have been completed in Helsinki’s educational institutions. Curated by HAM Helsinki Art Museum, Inka Bell has created a work for Pakila Primary School, Alma Heikkilä for Käpylä Comprehensive School, and Jan Lütjohann for Daycare Honkasuo. 

Visual artist Inka Bell’s work, Around, is a play of colour, form, and architecture. The work for Pakila Primary School and Daycare Eloisa on Elontie Street is installed on a column in the cafeteria. Blue and rust-coloured triangular steel elements twine around the column that runs through the building. The rhythmic arrangement of colours, forms, and shadows stimulates vision and creates an impression of movement round the column. Additionally, Bell’s work brings the forms of ancient Greece and classical architecture’s fluting – the vertical grooves on columns – into the present day. 

Inka Bell (b. 1981) works in the expanded field of printmaking, sculptural paper works, and public art. In her practice, Bell explores the relationship between the two-dimensional and three-dimensional and the basic elements of image making, such as form, material, colour, and repetition. Bell’s works take viewers into non-verbal observation and their inner emotions. Her earlier work Rotation was completed in the Pakila school premises on Halkosuontie Street in 2022. 

Visual artist Alma Heikkilä’s work draws attention to the interrelations we are entirely dependent on. For Käpylä Comprehensive School’s Väinölä building, Heikkilä created a two-part work called (+,+) soil, pore space, hyphae, phaneroplasmodium, small white wave, cells and cell clusters. The work creates a connection between humans, non-humans, and the environment by revealing the underground and microscopic life that can be only partially experienced through the human sensorium. The monumental painting dominating the multifunctional hall displays bacteria, microbiological growth, fungi, mycelia, and roots as large organic masses and small details. In a smaller relief, the themes are connected to the scale and shape of the human body. With her work, Heikkilä wanted to take part in the tradition of educational posters and monumental paintings in schools. Pupils get to see the work after autumn break, when the school’s renovation will be completed. 

Ink and pigments on canvas as well as plaster and epoxy resin are the main materials in Alma Heikkilä’s works. Heikkilä participated in the 2023 Helsinki Biennial with a spatial work on Vallisaari Island. In her art, Heikkilä explores interactions and scales beyond human comprehension. 

The artist Jan Lütjohann has created two installations of wooden sculptures for the Honkasuo daycare. The sculptures are made from curved pieces of reclaimed timber that Lütjohann has carved into repeating round shapes. The resulting ooooooo-shapes relate to ideas of repetition and quantity: annual growth rings of a tree, cycles of days and years, chains of events, or generations of trees, humans, and others. The sculptures are touchable and will age and change over time.   

Part of the artwork Daylight, Traces, Talks were artist-led carving workshops organized for the staff of the daycare. The purpose of these was to bring together the artist’s and the kindergarten staff’s practices and to strengthen the relationship between the participants and the artwork.  

Jan Lütjohann (b. 1987) uses pre-industrial tools and obsolete technology to contemplate on working with hands in the present and future. His sculptures and installations are often made from wood and take the shape of tools, equipment, and workspaces. In his workshops, participants use their bodies, hands, and tools to reflect their agency in their material and immaterial environment.  

The works were financed in accordance with Helsinki’s Percent for Art principle: A part of the city’s budgeting for construction and renovation projects is set aside for new public artworks. HAM Helsinki Art Museum acts as an art expert in these projects, and the works are added to the City of Helsinki’s art collection, managed and curated by HAM. The collection already includes more than 200 works implemented through the Percent for Art principle.