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The

Artist

Jenni Toivonen

Nominated in
2024
By
Copenhagen Photo Festival
Lives and Works in
Helsingfors
Jenni Toivonen (b.1993) is a Finnish visual artist and interdisciplinary practitioner, primarily working in the extended field of fine art photography. Her artistic work revolves around the interconnectedness of life, ecology, impermanence and the passage of time, which she often explores through the materiality of the human body and the earth. She sees the body as a vessel for a primal creative force and deeper existential understanding. Her practice is motivated by the entanglements of personal and environmental storylines. Besides moving between various media such as photographs, film, text, sound, performance and installation, Toivonen is interested in incorporating diverse approaches to broaden her take on artistic narratives. Through performative and ritualistic methods the artist seeks reciprocity and expanding the ways of knowing and coexisting with her surroundings.Toivonen's works have been exhibited in several solo exhibitions in Finland and in curated group exhibitions in countries such as France, Japan, Spain, Germany, Portugal and Iceland. She holds an MA in Photography from Aalto University and has studied audiovisual communication in UNQ Buenos Aires.
Projects
2024

Are We There

In 1929 a group of Finns, including Jenni Toivonen’s great grandparents and their family, set out to Brazil to build a utopian community in the tropics. Their mission was to live in harmony with nature, separated from the capitalist society and to lead a life based on vegetarianism. Decades later, the artist grew up listening to melodies from Brazil, and this ambience led her to the old village which is nowadays surrounded by the memory of the utopian era. Are We There by Jenni Toivonen investigates migration, memory and the connection between human and nature. It reflects on history in today’s world, as well as about the concept of utopia and longing for something distant as a catalyst for human action. At the core of the work lies a performative journey to the old village, where she tries to build a connection with the past by re-imagining and reconstructing it. Through rituals that immerse the human body in its environment, Toivonen explores the questions of origin, belonging and coexistence.
Jenni Toivonen
was nominated by
Copenhagen Photo Festival
in
2024
Show all projects
Each year every member of the FUTURES European Photography Platform nominates a set of artists and projects to become part of the FUTURES network.

Barbara Marstrand (b. 1994) has been selected for her project Still Life of Teenagers which playfully portrays the lives of Danish youth. Approaching photography with a curiosity about different groups of people, Marstrand offers a unique insight into different life experiences, combining her artistic practice and keen eye with sociological methods.

Emma Sarpaniemi (b.1993), based in Helsinki, has been selected for her project Two Ways to Carry a Cauliflower because of her refreshingly unique, satiric and at the same time intimate way of exploring identity. Through both performative and satirical self portraits, Sarpaniemi challenges traditional femininity and gender roles.

Frederik Danielsen (b. 1995) has been selected for his work revolving around the myths of the Danish island Als, where the artist himself grew up. Danielsen evokes the viewer's curiosity for these local places and their stories by applying a photographic approach that combines documentary photography and conceptual art, using both his own photographs as well as found material from local archives.

Jenni Toivonen (b. 1993) based in Helsinki, has been selected for her project Are We There - a performative journey to the old village Penedo where her grandparents were set to build an utopian community in the tropics. As it unfolds, the project becomes an investigation into migration, memory and history.

Mathias Eis (b. 1995) has been selected for his long-term project Are we nearly there yet?, which explores life at the 148 rest stops along the Danish highway. Although most Danish people have visited at least one of these stops, few attach any value to them, so Eis transforms these otherwise bland locations into places worth seeing.