Art may not be able to pre­vent cata­strophies or fix the prob­lems of the well­fare state – but it does tell, record, state things and remem­ber. And does focus on prob­lem areas. The desire to be under­stood is cent­ral to all com­mu­nic­a­tion. It is import­ant from the per­spect­ive of soci­ety as hear­ing and listen­ing to many voices and the widen­ing under­stand­ing it brings of what is good and right is cent­ral in everyone’s wellbeing. Art may increase well­being but is it neces­sary for it to always do so in order to remain an act­ive and fin­an­cial sup­por­ted part of chan­ging soci­ety? It’s not very mean­ing­ful to eval­u­ate art for it’s prof­it­able or any other bene­fits. Even though there aren’t any gen­eral meas­ur­ing sys­tems for art, art is still eval­u­ated in many dif­fer­ent ways.

Does art and artists have a role in the chan­ging soci­ety? How does the scarcity of funds affect the fund­ing of art? Does all activ­ity need to be fin­an­cially prof­it­able in order for it to be of import­ance? Will art become an aspect of the health ser­vices? Can art make people more well? What is artist’s work?

For Your Health Only! exhib­i­tion deals with a top­ical sub­ject. The demands for art to be instru­ment­al­ized, the chan­ging pos­i­tion of the artist and the emply­ment of artists for their lively­hoods has cre­ated plenty of dis­cus­sion lately. There are many unanswered ques­tions and to look into those ques­tions we invited a group of artists and stu­dents of The Finnish Academy of Art.

The exhib­i­tion is formed of two aspects: works that have been shown pre­vi­ously and new works which com­ment on them in some way or the sub­ject mat­ter in a more gen­eral way. We wanted to high­light a vari­ety of pro­ced­ures, solu­tions and pos­sib­il­it­ies that art and artists have to offer. We intend to con­tinue the dis­cus­sion, not try­ing to offer any answers. It is dif­fi­cult to see into the future but let us look into what’s hap­pen­ing now. We might then have a glimpse of what’s coming.

Artists: Art & Pro­cess, Oliver Kochta-Kalleinen and Tell­ervo Kal­leinen, Veera Jalava, Kaisa Salmi, Timo Tähkänen, Océane Bruel, Iiris Kaar­le­hto, Josefina Neli­markka, Joakim Pusenius, Mikko Tapio

Work group: Saara Han­nus, Miina Hujala, Maija Kas­v­inen, Mikael Kin­anen, Jussi Koitela, Iina Kuusimäki, Kat­ri­ina Ros­avaara and pro­fessor Maar­etta Jaukkuri ja lec­turer Martta Heikkilä

Video: Veera Jalava & Antti Sepponen

Photos: Veera Jalava with Aleksi Jalava, Oskari Pastila and Moa Karlberg