Art | Eetu Huhtala has been chosen as young artist of the year, and in her work she ponders whether there is any point in what she is doing

When artist Eetu Huhtala held an exhibition at Galleria Sculptor in Helsinki in the fall of 2021, the gallery markets the exhibition by saying that it revolves around feelings of frustration, inability and powerlessness:

“[Näyttelyn] the focus is on the concept of consumption, wasted energy, potential and resources, questions about the value of work and effort, the pursuit of results, the consumption and misuse of resources, failure, unfulfilled expectations, disappointment and the lack of progress.”

In the works of the exhibition, water poured into a bathtub that never managed to fill up. The yellow balloon slowly spun in the grips of the two escalator rails, unable to escape. The convincing-looking chain hoist couldn’t even lift a plastic bag.

On Monday, Eetu Huhtala won the Young Artist of the Year award, so it cannot be said that her career was just a misuse of resources and disappointment.

Huhtala reacts calmly to the joke-like question posed on the subject:

“I can’t say that I was somehow left out in the visual arts,” he says.

“But yes, those things come up both during and outside of work. My artistic work is accompanied by uncertainty about whether there is any point in doing it. You can’t avoid that question, no matter how you get awarded or receive grants and exhibitions.”

Huhtala says that she picks up subjects for her works from her own experiences or the experiences of those close to her. When working on the work, the private experience expands into a general and recognizable one. Who among us hasn’t experienced frustration or self-doubt? It also has social implications: What do we use energy for? Are the things pursued by today’s society right or meaningful?

Huhtala sums up the biggest challenge that he wrestles with in his work: “How to be able to make something that is not, however.”

The work can take its shape from the handrails of an escalator, for example, but Huhtala does not call the seller of Kone or Schindler and buy an escalator handrail for his work. He builds a suitable railing himself.

Every work is therefore a learning process for Huhtala. While making some works, he finds out for himself how a frequency converter works, or how aluminum is softened.

When planning the work Indecisive – i.e. the one where the balloon is stuck between the escalator rails – he had to find out which mechanism is used to move the escalator rails.

“You can’t put any chain or V-belt on the railing, which are usually used to transfer movement,” explains Huhtala.

We also had to figure out how to even scale the railing to a suitable size for the sculpture, because the escalators in shopping centers and metro stations are enormously long and much of their technology is under the floor.

The black rubber of the handrail was the only part he bought ready-made. Everything else he built himself.

Huhtala’s refined technical solutions are reminiscent of the artist couple Grönlund-Nisusen’s kinetic works drawing from natural phenomena, and no wonder: Petteri Nisunen was Huhtala’s final thesis supervisor at the Academy of Fine Arts. You would imagine that Huhtala would have an engineering background, but no – as a teenager, Huhtala was on her way to becoming a professional dancer before she moved through photography and animation to sculpting.

Today, Huhtala also does technical work for artist colleagues. Not all of them necessarily know how to turn their ideas into manufacturing drawings, based on which, for example, a large public artwork can be produced.

Knowledge is accumulated piece by piece.

“After each piece, I always have the same feeling that I would do it differently the next time,” he says and laughs. “But at the same time, there is a strong feeling that under no circumstances do you want to do the work a second time.”

Young artist of the year – prize includes a scholarship of 20,000 euros and the opportunity to have a solo exhibition at the Tampere Art Museum. Huhtala says that he has read through the announcement that the Tampere Art Museum informs about the award.

The jury described Huhtala’s art as reflecting the world of human experience alongside the everyday objects, activities and situations of today’s information, technology and consumer society.

Huhtala got the feeling from the text that the award jury caught what he was aiming for with his work. So sometimes the effort is seen and recognised.

“I got the feeling that maybe this really does make some sense.”