Sanni Vanttaja
Basic information
Visual artist
Residence: Helsinki
Contact information
Email: sanni.jasmiina@gmail.com
Artist’s Statement
I am a visual artist based in Helsinki, Finland. I’m working mainly with drawing, writing and printmaking. My artistic practice is contemplative and interrogative, and the themes are often of philosophical nature. Lately I have been mainly focusing on the nature of line and its making.
I find drawing a line a fundamental, even primitive way to seek and form meanings. It means leaving a direct, almost raw mark in the world. A line is always a mark, “an inscription” - and even at its simplest very dynamic and charged.
Drawing is a subtle and unassuming artform. It is also intense, corporeal work in which the movement of the artist’s body is being directly reproduced on the paper. The artist’s emotion and intention, that might not even be conscious, can be read in the lines and their variations. Thus while drawing, the artist has to place herself in a vulnerable position, to reveal herself. In my practice I reflect this frailty and delicateness, both as a strength and uncertainty. I also wish to channel these sort of sentiments to the viewers, as well as encourage them to face their own sensitivity.
Immersing oneself in artistic work can be seen as a critical gesture these days. For me it means tenderness, contemplation and grounding amid hecticness and demands. It can offer focus and serenity, and taking a break before constant observations and stimuli. Essential to my artwork is asking and seeking, empty space and slow pace. That point in which a question crystallizes into an image, an image into a new world.
I find drawing a line a fundamental, even primitive way to seek and form meanings. It means leaving a direct, almost raw mark in the world. A line is always a mark, “an inscription” - and even at its simplest very dynamic and charged.
Drawing is a subtle and unassuming artform. It is also intense, corporeal work in which the movement of the artist’s body is being directly reproduced on the paper. The artist’s emotion and intention, that might not even be conscious, can be read in the lines and their variations. Thus while drawing, the artist has to place herself in a vulnerable position, to reveal herself. In my practice I reflect this frailty and delicateness, both as a strength and uncertainty. I also wish to channel these sort of sentiments to the viewers, as well as encourage them to face their own sensitivity.
Immersing oneself in artistic work can be seen as a critical gesture these days. For me it means tenderness, contemplation and grounding amid hecticness and demands. It can offer focus and serenity, and taking a break before constant observations and stimuli. Essential to my artwork is asking and seeking, empty space and slow pace. That point in which a question crystallizes into an image, an image into a new world.
