When the body becomes a stage
Finland allows itself something wonderful: its own holiday for art. The Day of Visual Arts is celebrated every year on July 10, the birthday of the painter Helene Schjerfbeck (1862 to 1946), whose quiet self-portraits still rank among the greatest achievements of Finnish painting. All over the country this day brings art happenings, open studios and shared creative encounters. Art is not just shown here, it is experienced together.
In Hämeenlinna, the Museo Skogster in the middle of town hosts an open croquis session. Croquis means quick drawing from a live model, short poses, three minutes, then the next. Whoever wants to joins in, gets paper and starts. Around the model, in a semicircle, many very different lines and readings of the same moment take shape.
The venue could not be a better fit. Museo Skogster is the main house of the Hämeenlinna City Museum, and the croquis session takes place right inside the exhibition Yöperhoset, kimallusta ja kannanottoja, roughly Night Moths, Glitter and Statements. It tells of the world of burlesque, drag and dance, with a stage arch, feather capes and sparkling costumes on figurines, and runs until early January 2027. It is organised jointly by the city museum, the town's artists' association and Lady Misty May herself. Drawing between the showcases while the exhibition's subject sits in the flesh in front of you has a density of its own.
Behind Lady Misty May is the Finnish artist Susanna Immonen from Hattula, just outside Hämeenlinna. She first encountered burlesque as a spectator while living in England. Since 2015 she has worked as a performer, chair dancer, art model, teacher and producer. Her stage persona is an elegant English aristocrat whose perfect facade slowly begins to crumble as her humorous, narrative acts unfold. Exactly this doubling makes her such a fascinating model: whoever draws her always draws both, the persona and the woman behind it.
And burlesque means far more than seduction and shiny costumes. The artist herself decides how she shows her body, what she makes visible and where her boundaries lie. Exaggeration, humour and staging question classic ideas of femininity, beauty and the gaze on the female body. The body here is not a passive motif but a means of expression, a stage and a self-determined statement all at once. For me as a photographer who often thinks about distance and dignity, this is an afternoon that keeps on thinking with you.
The afternoon was co-organised by the town's artists' association, the Hämeenlinnan Taiteilijaseura, together with the city museum and Lady Misty May. Founded in 1948, the association has its workspace in the old Poltinaho art barracks on Miehistönkatu 5. For almost eighty years it has given the art of this town a home, with exhibitions, shared studios and initiatives like this open croquis session.
It is chaired by Tuire Toivola, a visual artist. We met three years ago through the exchange between the artists' group around Minttu Saarinen and our BBK chapter in Celle: every two years, artists from both towns visit each other, and back then I was here for the first time with a small group. That my own small exhibition now hangs in exactly this circle of people closes a loop.
Tuire's own works are made in ink, watercolour and mixed media, in acrylic, oil and charcoal. They are quiet images turned towards nature, in which water, light, shorelines and the sea keep returning: sheets like Valoa kohti (Towards the Light), the series Vedenalainen, maanpäällinen (Underwater, Above Ground) or the seven-part charcoal sequence Eräänä päivänä lähden merelle (One Day I Will Head Out to Sea). A visit to the association's gallery is planned for the second week of the residency, and I am looking forward to it.
Some afternoons stay with you because several things happen in them at once.“From the note on the croquis afternoon, day 2