Past events

Yö Fest vol. 4.1
”Standing frequencies”
1.3.-10.3.2024
Opening: 29.2.2024, 18.00-21.00

Opening programme: Ida Nisonen's performance Needle and Thread, 19.30-20.00

Artist featured: Anne-Mari Alrsumi, Krista Blomqvist, Mirka Keini, Pauliina Korpi, Minja Laakso, Ines Masanti, Satu Metsola, Marianne Monto, Jukka-Pekka Niemi, Anu Nirkko, Isabel Pathirane, Marja Rosenberg, Tiio Suorsa, Barbara Tieaho.

Yö Fest vol. 4  is a free art festival in the heart of Helsinki running for two and a half months. The yearly multidisciplinary art festival by Artists' Association Yö enriches and enlivens the capital's culture. Yö Fest vol. 4 offers a wide selection of art from a diversity of disciplines and artists.

Yö Fest vol. 4 is a celebration of art lasting the whole spring - the free multidisciplinary art festival delights with plentiful offerings.

Yö Fest vol. 4 is a free art festival in the heart of Helsinki running for two and a half months. The yearly multidisciplinary art festival by Artists' Association Yö enriches and enlivens the capital's culture. Yö Fest vol. 4 offers a wide selection of art from a diversity of disciplines and artists. Works by the members of Artists’ Association Yö have been curated into four group exhibitions. The works are for sale at Yö Galleria. The festival culminates in May with the fifth instalment that focuses on performing arts.

Yö Fest vol. 4 takes place between 29.2.-12.5.2024. The central location is Yö Galleria, located in the centre of Helsinki at Lönnrotinkatu 33.

Yö Fest is an accessible event that everyone is welcome to experience. As a free art festival, Yö Fest offers high-quality and interesting art experiences also for those who do not have the funds to take part in expensive cultural events. Yö Fest offers art for everyone and for all senses.

The event is supported by the Finnish Cultural Foundation and the City of Helsinki.

Yö Fest vol. 4.1
”Standing frequencies”
1.3.-10.3.2024
Opening: 29.2.2024, 18.00-21.00

Opening programme: Ida Nisonen’s performance Needle and Thread, 19.30-20.00

Artists featured: Anne-Mari Alrsumi, Krista Blomqvist, Mirka Keini, Pauliina Korpi, Minja Laakso, Ines Masanti, Satu Metsola, Marianne Monto, Jukka-Pekka Niemi, Anu Nirkko, Isabel Pathirane, Marja Rosenberg, Tiio Suorsa, Barbara Tieaho.

Yö Fest vol. 4.2
”New old friends”
15.-24.3.2024
Opening: 14.3.2024, 18.00 -21.00

Opening programme: Sami Juhani Rekola’s performance Laiskiainen, 18.00-19.00

Artists featured: Saara Lakso, Mark&Potta, Antti Minkkinen, Ida Nisonen, Jussa Pennanen, Harri Piispanen, Gabriella Presnal, Misa Saraste, Timothy Smith, Sanna Ulvila, Ilari Vanhatalo, Veera Vartiainen, Eero Yrjölä, Tony Åman.

Yö Fest vol. 4.3

”Fishes of the paradise city”
29.3.-7.4.2024
Opening: 28.3.2024, 18-21

Artists featured: Riikka Ahlfors, Heidi Halonen, Bekim Hasaj, Tuomas Holst, Katri Hämäläinen, Mimosa Isomäki, Tuomas Karjalainen, Henna Parkkinen, Henriikka Pöllänen, Lotta Suomi, Silja Uuttula.

Yö Fest vol.4 Interlude

9.4. Ipe Heinonen: Fragile - a participatory performance 

10.-13.4.2024. Anu Miettinen: Circulation Kiertokulku II - installation and forest-themed conversations

Yö Fest vol. 4.4
”One ordinary day”
19.-28.4.2024
Opening: 18.4.2024, 18-21

Artists featured: Kalle Ahonen, Sahar Ajami, Heli Hamid, Hannes Helki, Rosamai Kirjokangas, Laura Kopio, Elias Langi, Kristiina Lähteenmäki-Hein, Outi Ruottinen, Pauliina Waris.

Yö Fest vol. 4.5
3.5.-12.5.2024

Programme

3.5. Lotta Suomi ja Heli Keskikallio: Kuvitteellisten olentojen tanssit

4.5. Five Penny Black Magic / Lepäävät naaraat / Mirka Keini / Jukka Nevalainen: Kosmiset Säkeet 

5.5 Ilari Edelmann

7. 5 Josef Ka 

8.5. Röntgen meeting  

10.5 SPEEEDO 

11.5 Suvi Tuominen and Dash Che

12.5 Zhang Yan

Lotta Esko & Naya Magaliou: Fruits, Unite!
14.-25.2.2024
Opening 14.2. at 18, welcome!

Fruits, Unite! is a mixed media art exhibition showcasing the work of Helsinki based visual artist Lotta Esko and Athens based visual artist Naya Magaliou. Whilst analyzing the visual symbol of the banana, Fruits, Unite! repeats various iterations of the fruit in painting, sculptural, textual and research-based mediums.

The artworks are an investigation into colonial history, European food culture and sexual/gender/cultural identities.The banana is used as a pretext to engage with the many ideas relating to the long history of using tropical fruits as symbols in European visual culture. Magaliou, shows large scale acrylic paintings on found materials and Esko shows sculptural pieces again, made with found materials. 

Writer and academic Raita Merivirta, contributes with her text The Story of the Most Popular Fruit in the World: Banana, where she discusses the process of the banana's domestication and how it came to be an international commodity.

Abstraction on Nykänen exhibition and Suksimies (Ski-Man) mini-opera
14-25 Feb. 2024.
Opening February 14th at 6–8 pm

Matti Nykänen played many roles, from ski jumping legend to pop artist to prison inmate. In Kimmo Sarje’s view, Nykänen was also a “headline artist” who, together with trusty journalists, often created headlines to help sell tabloids, sometimes by disorderly conduct and bragging, and at other times apologising for his behaviour. Nykänen, who died at the age of 55 in February 2019, had a flair for tragicomic drama.

In his exhibition Abstraction on Nykänen, Sarje interprets the life and career of the ski jumping world champion as a montage of headlines and geometric shapes through collage, installation and serigraphy. Sarje’s libretto for the mini-opera Suksimies (“Ski-man”) is also part of the exhibition.

The show culminates in Suksimies, composed and performed by Juha Haanperä, accompanied by live improvisation from Julius Haanperä. According to the composer, Nykänen’s contradictory life bounces sonically in many directions. He interprets this through both traditional and experimental means.

The mini-opera will be performed three times during the exhibition: at 7 pm on Wednesday February 14 and at 3 pm on Sunday February 18 and Saturday February 24. In addition, the 1998 video version of Avantgarden kaiho (Nostalgia for the Avant-Garde), a mini-opera by Haanperä, Sarje and Kimmo Koskela, will be shown on Thursday February 22 at 5 pm.

After the presentations, there will be opportunities for discussion. In addition to the artists, these will include Professor Altti Kuusamo on February 18 and Matti Hintikka, content service coordinator of the Tahto Centre for Finnish Sports Culture, on February 24. After the video presentation on February 22, Professor Markku Kivinen and translator Jukka Mallinen will discuss the future of Russia and the Russian avant-garde.

Noora Kaunisto: Crackle
26.1.-11.2.2024

The paintings in the exhibition have their roots in feelings of eerie, charged atmospheres. Weird and unknown elements entangle with the cozy and familiar. Soft-bodied creatures bump into coarse structures. Paint in all its insurgency takes its own routes. The creatures or phenomena in the paintings often bleed into each other, are only vaguely remembered, or waver in between several ways of being.

OPEN CALL FOR THE MEMBERS OF ARTISTS' ASSOCIATION YÖ

Yö Galleria will host Yö Fest vol. 3 from the beginning of March to mid-May 2024. The programme will consist of art by members of the association. The festival's exhibitions will change repeatedly over a period of more than two months. In addition, member artists may organize events, performances and concerts in conjunction with the festival.

You can propose up to three artworks to the Yö Fest group exhibitions. These can be newer or older works.

Pictures of the works selected for Yö Fest are also on display on Yö ry's website. Artists' Association Yö takes a 20% commission on the sale of the work from the VAT-free price of the work.

The artists are responsible for the construction, the technical equipment and the dismantling of the works, performances and events, as well as for the supervision and cleaning of the gallery space.

Please send your application to: yofest@yory.fi
NB! Name the image files in the format: LASTNAME_FIRSTNAME_WORK_YEAR_TECHNIQUE

Deadline for proposals is on 31.12. at. 23:59

PARTICIPATION IN THE YÖ FEST IS CONDITIONAL ON PAYMENT OF THE 2023 MEMBERSHIP FEE. 

Juliana Hyrri: My Barbie realness
24.11.-10.12.2023

My Barbie realness is a gentle story about tenderness, midsummer and longing. The exhibition features paintings and drawings.

Our Place
1.-12.11.2023

Our Place is an exhibition surrounding queer, nomadic, and othered experiences in and around different forms of spatiality. I was interested in how queer people occupy and take up space, but also how one's parallel experiences of queerness and moving around in different countries impact how one moves in between and through different spaces, their sense of self, and their relationships. I was thinking about when one starts to feel at home in a place or country, and how to also feel at home with or as a community; do queer nomadic people feel at home here? Do we feel belonging or non-belonging? How can we create a form of space that allows these experiences? For ourselves and for each other. A large part of this I also feel is how we contextualize ourselves, and perhaps a connecting issue would be how we contextualize ourselves in our current culture, and, as an extension, queer history. 

Anna Emilia Järvinen ́s (b. -90 in Oulu) and Eetu Kylmälä ́s in collaboratively created exhibition in Yö Gallery (30.10. - 12.11.2013) ”Salonkikelpoista sekamelskaa (Salon-worthy mess)” with mixed media paintings, drawings and sculptures talk to each other present in this time.
The artists noticed that they shared similar feelings and values when getting to know each other a couple of years ago in the eastern Helsinki, and these experiences are primal, collective and universal.

The core of it all is the message of human dignity that everyone automatically has and sentence ”everyone has the same starting point” -is a lie. Modern man ́s strange idea of separateness in relation to nature also comes to the fore.

This unadorned exhibition is full of life ́s contradictions, fear, the constant presence of death and love.

ALETHEIA
HYPERBOREA: IN THE GARDEN OF APOLLO
Fri 27.10.2023

doors open at 18.30
performance at 19.00
duration of the performance 45 minutes

On Friday, October 27th, at Yö Galleria, we step back in time into the ancient hyperborean temple ritual. Hyperborea was a mysterious land, hidden behind the snowy Rhipai Mountains. The northern wind, Boreas, came from the mountains, but beyond the mountains, peace prevailed.