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Cloth & Culture NOW
the artists - Agneta Hobin, Finland
I am a Finnish-born artist living in Finland. Thanks to my Swedish
mother and Norwegian grandmother, I also contain a generous dose
of Scandinavianness.
It seems natural that all this will be visible in my work.
At different times in my life, I have also lived elsewhere: a
year in Germany on graduating, followed by two in Denmark and,
later on, a year in Canada with my family.
While living abroad, I have felt my national
identity becoming stronger, I have seen its characteristic features
more clearly from a distance. Especially in multicultural North
America I realised how patently the Fenno-Scandinavian mode of
expression that I represent stands out somehow as being clearly
delimited and recognisable from the surrounding world of hundreds
of cultures.
With regard to the influence of these manifold cultures on my work,
it is hard to say. In any case, experiences are filtered and pass
on to the unconscious. It is highly unlikely that any exotic solutions
will be adopted directly. It is a matter of adaptation.
We Finns are not very urban, but still live very close to nature.
This particularly applies to artists, and I clearly see this as
being a positive resource in my creative work.
Colours, lights and structures exist in their
most perfect form in nature. Nature composes, groups and assembles
or dismantles materials in the right way, authentically.
The wind bears things away, water currents
carry them along and sort them into categories. Light is strained
and filtered through clouds, foliage or blades of grass. These
events surround us from morning till evening, from season to season,
always imperceptibly changing, fading or growing darker, filling
up or emptying out.
I was born and grew up in Helsinki, right in the old, urban city
centre.
Nevertheless, my parents understood the great importance of a knowledge
of nature, and so they arranged opportunities for us children to
spend time in the country, in particular during the long school
summer holidays. Early on, I developed a love for the landscapes
of the countryside and, on the other hand, for the old urban scene.
So, I now have two homes, one in the countryside,
beside a big lake and the forest, amid the silence, the other in
Finland’s
capital city, amid the busy cultural life, noisy traffic and the
pulse of activity.
This dual existence provides fertile ground for my creative work.
Finally, here are a few answers to the various questions for which
the preceding text has not yet given a clear explanation.
Even though I see (Finnish) nature as being absolutely the most
significant thing of all for my work, cultural experiences are
certainly important, too. They can serve as inspirational sources
of revitalisation on a quite human level, and via that for my work.
I have a close affinity with Finnish culture, because I know it
personally, and I can also recognise the background, the roots
and the history in the works of a colleague or of a Finn who follows
another art discipline. A good Finnish artwork can also prompt
feelings of patriotic pride.
Absorbing all manner of influences is a positive thing, whether
they be from home or abroad.
Nevertheless, as an artist what is important is how I personally
filter my experiences and interpret them using my own signature
style, so that this creates something new and not just a copy.
Nowadays, for me, all the most obvious influences from Finnish
textiles in the rest of the world can be summed up in the name
of a single company, and that is Marimekko.
Admittedly, even this company’s signature style and ornamentation
have a broad cultural background, which originates, for instance,
in the textile history of India and Japan. Marimekko (by that I
chiefly mean Maija Isola) has simply been able to interpret this
material using its own modern approach.
First of all, in my own work as an artist I make a distinction
between two clearly different areas:
Functional textiles and pure art textiles.
My functional textiles were the printed fabrics that I concentrated
on in the first decade of my career.
The church textiles (“liturgical textiles”) that I
design are also functional textiles, even if they are unique objects.
My art textiles, or my ‘works’, are, for me, recognisably
Finnish-Nordic. The need for simplification is rooted in this tradition.
The attempt at subtle use of colour is linked with this, too. I
am also intensely aware of the importance of quality, of the authenticity
of the materials.
FINLAND
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