Anu Tuominen’s artworks and installations are composed of found objects and handicrafts. For more than three decades, she has methodically collected everyday items from flea markets and natural materials while travelling. In her work, she transforms these previously used materials, giving them new form and meaning.
Tuominen’s works are a form of easily accessible conceptual art that operates with language and the familiar meanings of objects. The works are cleverly executed ideas, offering the viewers joyful insights. Many of Tuominen’s works rely on repetition, such as the impressive collections of potholders and cloth pegs. In some works, new meanings are articulated with the help of language, transforming orange balls into Backyard Oranges. Tuominen’s exhibition creates a taxonomic system, where everything has its own place. The artist’s exceptional ability to use the framework of art allows her to bring anything into the museum – whether it be handicrafts, rocks, coins or a complete flea market – and transform it into art.
In Tuominen’s artistic practice, conceptual thinking and handicrafts have always been seamlessly merged. Both are forms of human creative activity that involve repetition. Neither is about imitation: conceptual art creates new relationships of meaning, while craft creates entirely new objects, independent of any original subject.
Although one of the popular features of Tuominen’s art is the shared memorabilia formed by familiar objects, it escapes the nostalgia gilded by memories. Rather, the groups of objects and meanings simply make use of familiarity, constructing a new order on top of it, which could be described as a heartfelt anthropology of objects made by the human species.
Anu Tuominen (b. Lemi) graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts 1995 and from the University of Art and Design (current Aalto University) in 1992. In 1995, she received the Grand Prize of Mänttä Art Festival, followed by the Ars Fennica Award in 2003.
Her most recent exhibitions include: Sun-dried Carrots (Hotel and Restaurant Museum, 2025), Department Store (Jyväskylä Art Museum, 2024–2025), Kopplingar (The Åland Islands Art Museum, 2023) and Market (Hyvinkää Art Museum, 2023). Since 1993, Tuominen’s artwork has been featured in dozens of solo and group shows around the world, and her works are included in major art collections in Finland. She has completed approximately ten public projects, including commissions for the New Children’s Hospital in Helsinki (2018) and the Ministry of Education (2008).
The Arts Promotion Centre Finland (Taike) has supported the artist’s work. The exhibition has received funding from the Finnish Heritage Agency.
I look for art and I make it
from the familiar and the ordinary,
so nobody will notice,
be forewarned,
have time to take an attitude,
be forearmed,
rather they will be surprised,
by something inexplicable
by experience, by an intimation,
without the art situation
or its hallmarks,
they invent it for themselves,
see, not just look.
– Anu Tuominen
More information
Curator
Niina Tanskanen
niina.tanskanen@avan.fi
040 585 4499
