Meanings and Materialities
Meanings and Materialities
Exhibition 6–15 June
Open every day 12:00-18:00Heidi Hänninen
KAS! Kontula Art School is a community-based street/art school -project initiated by artist-researcher Heidi Hänninen in Kontula suburb 2019. Her socially engaged public art practice can be seen as a form of forth sector activism and as a gift of democracy that can benefit other societal actors as well.
Heidi Hänninen, community artist and and artist-researcher, has her background in concrete sculpture (Uniarts, Helsinki, M.F.A 2016) and art education (University of Lapland, M.A 2017). Heidi has studied at the Department of Monumental Painting in St. Petersburg, Stieglitz Academy (2008–2009) and after her year in exchange she has been painting murals both in Finland and abroad. She is experienced in working within different street art assembles.
Heidi has been using and developing street art as a form of socially engaged art practice. For her street art is both a form of public art and a method for community art with an ability to (learn to) communicate, not only between residents, but also between people, organizations and institutions who might otherwise stay far away from each other. In her art practice street is an arena for visibility and existence, where new realities can be born and different lives be seen, enabling people to encounter.
As her PhD Heidi is preparing her research related to socially engaged public art for the Doctoral Studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Uniarts Helsinki (2021-). Heidi lives and works in East Helsinki suburb Kontula, where she has been leading her community-based KAS! Kontula Art School project focusing on socially engaged street art practice (since 2019) and working with the locals (since 2016). Besides developing these art fields, the aim of the research is to build ethically sensitive methodological tool kit to be used in culturally diverse and socially layered contexts, including substance use cultures.
Facebook and Instagram: @kaskontulartschool
Homepage: www.heidihanninen.com
Contact: heidi.hanninen@uniarts.fi / kontulartschool@gmail.com