Helsinki World Design Capital 2012

Helsinki, World Design Capital of 2012, is this year’s destination for every design lover with an eye for exciting events, encounters and eccentric exhibitions. Known for their long and distinguished history in design, Finns consider the mandate, granted by the International Council of Societies of Industrial Design, as an exquisite way to present how design can be used to make everyday life better, easier and more functional. During the year, numerous workshops aim to solve ordinary citizens’ challenges, such as improving the meals of elderly living in nursing homes, designing resource sparing products and creating more comfortable coffee cups.

Rather than experiencing art merely in its traditional surroundings, museums and galleries; Helsinki allures visitors to take a bath and share quiet togetherness, enjoying the finesse of wood architecture, or letting culinary arts guide us from restaurant to restaurant during the Restaurant Day in May. Before the sauna, gastronomic art, rocking chair get-togethers and font walks take place later in spring, there are some interesting things happening indoors as well.  

Kiasma, Helsinki’s contemporary art museum, presents 14 of Finland’s most interesting cartoonists in  the exhibition “Päin näköä!” They interpret the world of cartoon with varying techniques, exploiting space  often in a three-dimensional manner. Visual culture, especially the influence of visual arts and underground life, has inspired pieces of the pieces, which reflect autobiographical representations of the artists’.

Another intriguing exhibition, “Primordial Sea”, by Outi Heiskanen who is best known for sensitive line work graphics, is on display in the Didrichsen Art Museum, which is a remarkable modernist design itself. Heiskanen’s 75th anniversary exhibition presents paintings, sculptures and installations that take place in a mystical ambiance of fantasy world and create stories with layered psychic relationships between humans and other creatures.

Occupy Museums is not the only movement this year to engage art lovers of all socio-economic statuses. As the World Design Capital, Helsinki shows art and design can highlight our everyday lives in aesthetic and functional ways.  

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