SINO – FI
or
The End and the Beginning of IMMORTALITY

In turns strangely serious and deadly hilarious, Sino-Fi brings Finnish contemporary art to the Minsheng Museum in Shanghai, with an opening gesture of invitation to a conversation with a Chinese co-curator. The Finnish component opens windows on several generations of contemporary art from this far-northern land, a place “more different than most”.

The artists in this exhibition work in film, video, photography as well as other media that can be read as animated images. Just as one image of the world comes to an end (e.g. Laitinen’s crumbling Detroit) it is also coming to life again (his Copper in the newly-built ghost-town in China). The dream and the nightmare of immortality is always in rebirth — through endless documentation (Kurenniemi), through permanent transfer (Laitinen), through nature’s indefatigability (Mäkipää), through existential social ontologies (Syrjälä, Tuomaala) or through the fossilization of commemoration of grand events (Markus Copper),

The exhibition will showcase such internationally pioneering new media artists as Erkki Kurenniemi in a work by the experimental media artist Mika Taanila (both at dOCUMENTA 13), leading Finnish artists in their prime today, as well as exciting up-and-coming names. It serves, in short, as an introduction to the internationally acclaimed Finnish contemporary visual art scene.

In conjunction with the exhibition a screening-programme of a young, fresh crop of Finnish experimental film and video artist will be presented. This will allow an insight into the still to-be-discovered names, next to established figures. This will be accompanied by a panel discussion, including the several Finnish artists invited to Shanghai to produce new commissions or install their work, and enter into cooperation or dialogue with Chinese artists.

SINO-FI provides a selection of the latest developments in Finnish art,
as well as a whiff of the history of experimental media art – a first step in a conversation which looks forward to responses from the Chinese co-curators. See the list of the Chine artists below proposed by the curatorial team of the Mingsheng Museum.