Pilvi Takala

Over the past decade, artist Pilvi Takala has developed an intriguing body of work, which dismantles established conventions created within particular, usually closed social environments. Previously Takala has worked with video, documenting her experimental performances that challenge the invisible social codes in various communities or situations. In her work Drive with Care (2012) the artist examines the social boundaries of an elite boarding school in the US by adopting through staged activities the identity of a schoolteacher. As is typical in Takala’s creative practice, the work explores and blurs the artist’s identity, while being also a sociological study on human behavior.

In 2013, Pilvi Takala won the Frieze Foundation’s Emdash Award with her entry The Committee. In the project Takala gave a committee of children aged between 8–12 years old from the Eastside Youth Centre in Bow, East London, the opportunity to decide on how to use the majority of the Award production budget, which after the research and development costs was about £7,000.

The following series of workshops focused on exercises in creative thinking, as the children experimented with different decision-making methods in smaller, everyday choices. This allowed the group to observe how different methods work, what social factors are at play and ultimately, which process is best to use in their final decision on the outcome of the overall project. As a result, the Committee made a decision to create “a five-star bouncy castle,” which Frieze projects unveiled as part of a community event in Bow in August 2014.

Pilvi Takala starts her 6-month artist-in-residence period at ISCP in January 2015. ISCP is a residency-based contemporary art institution in New York that aims to support international exchange between artists and curators. The ISCP residence is enabled by the collaboration between The Finnish Cultural Institute and the Alfred Kordelin foundation.

http://www.pilvitakala.com/