Galleria Salmi, Laajasalo library. The gallery is open according to the opening hours of the Laajasalo Library.
🌼 3-30 January 2023
Welcome to our opening on January 3, 6-8 pm.
Bee Company’s exhibition at Laajasalo library celebrates the Company’s three-year anniversary in Tullisaari park. In 2019, Tullisaari shifted from the era of trade advisor Borgström to the Age of Bees, when artists Aino Aksenja and Ina Niemelä assigned it to flowers and bees. Since then, they have served this sweet union with their art.
Aino and Ina have made the works in the exhibition in the meantime between work, studying and family life. The artworks were born of the joy and pleasure of making things with your hands, as well as the desire to be in and take care of the garden together – to cherish friendship and find time for creativity. In their work, Bee Company combines handicraft, gardening and contemporary art. For them, handicrafts reflect attitude, patience, strength and tenderness towards fellow beings, in circumstances where freedom to live a life of one’s own must be found in the midst of community and care. Life in art and gardening is passionate, pulsating, repetitive; full of disappointments and breathtaking beauty. The pleasure it gives springs from slowness, manual labor and fingers in soil. The apparent lightness and mundanity of the works is a sleight of hand.
📣Bee Company’s five-point manifesto for Laajasalo’s future:
- Laajasalo’s nature areas are preserved or expanded, and animal transition routes between green areas are increased.
- Parks are opened to city dwellers and garden enthusiasts as places where you can participate in planning, tending and harvesting. Parks become common gardens and meeting places for the citizens.
- More perennial urban farming areas will be established and proper water supply will be arranged for them by the city. Farming and gardening are seen as important alongside other hobby opportunities and recreational activities. Urban farming activities are developed and farmers are supported in the activity and in its self-directed organization.
- A service center for Laajasalo residents will be built in Tullisaari park, which will include barrier-free toilets, a water point, a break room, a garden shed and a workshop.
- Bee Company demands cheaper public transport in exchange for the suffering caused by the bridge construction on the island.
The Swedish Cultural Foundation in Finland, Arts Promotion Centre Finland, Finnish Cultural Foundation, City of Helsinki and Finnish Oistat-centre have supported our work.
Thank you for all our supporters and friends, especially Catharina, Liisu and Henri ❤️
