Probably the smallest light art festival in the world

Light festivals often aim to be big, flashy and as extravaganza as possible. Thesmallest certainly doesn’t. Its idea is to have very small light art works in just a few blocks’ area, placed in existing spots, without any extra structures. After the first edition, Thesmallest Vallila, here’s some looking-back from the curator’s viewpoint. 

There were some flashing colours even in Thesmallest Vallila.
Pasi Rauhala: Disco Pope. Photo: Hannu Iso-Oja.

Even our leaflets were tiny. A huge amount of folding, though.

After seeing Merijn Bolink's Artificial Truth in Arvika ljus! festival in 2022, the idea of a miniature light art festival had been on my to-do list. I didn’t actually do anything about it, though, before I met my colleague and now friend Stefan Aleksandar Jovanovski. After an hour or so after we first met, we decided to do the festival together. And so we did, as the instantly founded, Finnish-Macedonian Thesmallest Collective. The first edition, Thesmallest Vallila, was in my hoods, in the wooden house area Puu-Vallila, in Helsinki, in October 2025. 

I’m a keen traveler, and I do admit that in addition to artistic aims, I also thought Thesmallest would be an easy, light and cheap-to-product festival, that fits into one bag and would be our ticket to nice festivals in fancy places around the world. 

Well, let’s see how that went.

This is where it all started in Arvika.
Merijn Bolink: Arificial Truth.

Windows, the easy way out

The idea was to place the artworks mainly in windows, to be easily seen but still safely indoors. This way we could avoid building extra infrastructure and paying for security, instead engaging the community in the event. The people of Puu-Vallila were very window-generous, as I enquired about the matter in the local social media, which obviously made me happy. As did all the help we got from the people and businesses of the area. I just cannot thank them all enough. The same goes to the funders, Helsinki City and Arts Promotion Centre Finland.

Most of our artworks were new, but I obviously just had to have Merijn Bolinks Artificial Truth to the festival, being the original spark for it. The glowing matchbox was placed on a small pile of newspapers, both designed by AI, looking nostalgic and ok at first sight, but total baloney at the second look. We decided to place the artwork in my own window, and to lift the artwork a tad higher, I added some newspapers to the pile. Since I read mine online, I had to do some dumpster diving for the papers – in case you were wondering what curators actually do.

Alexanders Salvesen’s Primordial Sea was well suited to be displayed in a window, and there was a row of three very good ones available. We chose the compositionally best one, in spite of it having a pile of household machinery right behind it. I was way too chubby to fit in to install the artwork, but luckily Stefan is slender. He’s also close to 2m tall, and I sometimes wonder if Thesmallest Collective is an appropriate name for us.

As our observant readers might notice, this is a new version
of Merijn Bolink's Artificial Truth, since the first one got lost.

This time people had a good reason to
lurk around other people's windows

Alexander Salvesen's Primordial Sea lighting the street,
in a window, just as planned.
Photo: Hannu Iso-Oja

Partial defenestration of the concept

Some of artists were happy with windows, but some had other ideas. 

Technically, Jere Suontausta’s choice of site was a window, but not a regular one. He got inspired by a ventilation hatch of a basement, which luckily was the basement of a friend of mine. Even in the scale of Thesmallest, Suontausta’s object was tiny: for Starring Dust, he carefully chose a dust particle in the basement and prepared a short movie starring the said particle. After the festival, the particle was just as carefully returned to its original place.

I admit that I’m guilty of this conceptual defenestration too. While shopping in the local Alepa corner store for my daily treats, I realised that Anne Roininen, one of our artists, might want to do something there. She did, and Alepa agreed. Thus, the Geopolitical Burger was born. 

Another existing piece was Pasi Rauhala’s Disco Pope, sporting a miniature pope on a miniature disco floor. We found a fitting spot for it in the loveliest Pikku Vallila restaurant, a local, super cosy corner bar. We did consider windows first, but in the end The Pope was placed on the counter. Every time I checked on the artwork during the festival, there was the same guy sitting by it. Gotta admire the devotion. To the art, I’m sure.

The dust particle was indeed ready for its close-up.
Jere Suontausta: Starring Dust.

Making of Starring Dust: artist in his studio, discussing with curator.

It took people a while to find Anne Roininen's Geopolitical Burger,
but they were really excited, when they did. Lots of giggling!
Photo: Hannu Iso-Oja

Pasi Rauhala's Disco Pope was probably the
first pope hanging in a bar for nine days ever since the Borgias
Photo: Hannu Iso-Oja

The great outdoors

At this point, we’d given up on the indoors idea and decided to place some of the artworks to the wild urban open. Anne Roininen’s piece was a diptych, and the other, green burger found its place in the window grill of the local Magnet Pub (so UG they don't even have a webpage), a rugged and wonderful local bar with Christmas lights on the year round. The window grill hadn’t been opened for years, and the key was lost anyway, so the pub owner simply cut the padlock for us. 

Terike Haapoja’s piece was based on her earlier work A House to Inhabit (2002), one of my all-time favourites. The original artwork was an empty house, where only furniture’s painted shadows were seen, in a glow of bare bulbs. The Vallila version was, obviously, named A Doll House to Inhabit. As I contacted the building's chairperson about the ventilation hatch for Suontausta’s piece, he said yes and suggested the gazebo as a place for an artwork, too. The Doll House was a perfect match. It was a heavy piece, and in a private-ish yard so we trusted that it’d stay unharmed. It did, Puu-Vallila is an exceptionally nice area.

The niceness is why we dared to give up all the demands of artworks being indoors or too heavy for being stolen, when it came to Salla Salin’s artwork. Salin is a very site-minded artist, prone to details, and this time she found beauty in a crack between two stones in a wall. With this simple intervention, Rift pointed out how details do matter and embraced the whole wall as its canvas. 

Anne Roininen: Geopolitical Burger 2,
also not known as The Wicked Burger of the West.
Photo: Hannu Iso-Oja

Terike Haapoja's A Doll House to Inhabit, outdoors

A Doll House to Inhabit, indoors

Salla Salin's Rift reminds me of that song of Leonard Cohen,
you know, cracks and light getting in.

The preferred amount of audience

Even though Puu-Vallila is quite a concentration of cultural people, I was a tad nervous about how our festival would be received. Would it be too small? Too conceptual? Too weird? 

Turns out, it wasn’t. 

In keeping the festival small, one of the most difficult things mentally was to give up aiming at a big audience. The small size of the artworks would make it hard to see them in a crowd, and we wanted people to have time to contemplate them. So we gave up on the number of visitors being the prime count of success. In fact, we were a tad afraid there would be too many people.

Luckily, there was no energy left for advertising anyway.

People finding Geopolitical Burger

People finding Primordial Sea

Still, during the nine days we had some 3000 visitors, which was quite the maximum. There were some ques during the busiest hours, but usually people could have the artworks to themselves, at least for a moment. On one particularly rainy and windy night I went to check on the artworks, expecting to see nobody. But behold, the goths were there! 

Whispering future

Our idea of a collection of small artworks that could be packed in a bag and easily whisked to windows somewhere was in shambles. Instead, we got a highly site-specific festival with exceptional spots for the artworks, shy to big audiences and partly impossible to transfer. Which was way better in so many other ways. 

In the process, we realised that in addition to smallness, locality indeed was a main point for our festival. For the possible future editions, we’d like to transfer just the concept and curators and start from the scratch with local artists. Except, if a millionaire wants to invite the first edition with the artists remaking it in a nice place somewhere warm, then we’ll drop the integrity in a heartbeat. If you happen to be that millionaire, or otherwise interested, check the website and rider.

Even though the idea of smallness was originally a quirk and a question of practicality, it really made us think the concept thoroughly and find beauty in keeping things small. Yes, sometimes a large scale is needed, but it shouldn’t be the default. As one of the visitors said: “Sometimes the biggest ideas whisper”.

Or, by the words of another visitor: “LOL, well done”.

Anne and Stefan taking Burgers home

Not safe to the extreme

RE.LIGHT, Regensburg, 12.–22.3.2026

relight-regensburg.de

The biannual light art festival’s first edition in 2024 was a very good start, and 2026 edition, again curated by Nika Perne, shows what might be the direction I’m hoping RE.LIGHT will take. 

Regular people of Regensburg
Katja Heitmann: Perpetuum

Simplicity and other great ideas

Many of my favourite artworks of the festival had a clear and simple idea, realised with flashy technical stuff. Anyhow, the flashy stuff was used as a fitting and well considered material in service of the idea, not a show-off in its own right. In cases like these, the temptation to add a snazzy gimmick to the artwork just because you can, is massive. My highest respect for these artists that had the integrity not to do so.

I’ve seen Margareta Hesse’s No Barrier several times and it keeps bringing me immense joy, especially the fence-y part of it. A barrier that disappears as soon as you dare to walk through it – such an ultimately simple and impressive idea. Looks good, too. It's also interactivity on a very rudimentary level; just walking is enough. However, the sharp red laser lines in the haze do look so solid that it required some bravery from the audience to cross those lines.

Simplicity was the strength of Alessandro Lupi’s Antiego, too. The mirror that doesn’t show your face was, a tad ironically, the selfie hit of the festival. The artwork created a very specific anxiety of not seeing one’s face where it should be, while everyone else was visible just fine. A very specific and condensed form of FOMO, which after a while, though, became quite liberating.

Katja Heitmann’s Perpetuum has a simple idea, too, a collection of people’s movements, but the implementation was more multifaceted. The well-orchestrated imagery was projected on walls, presented on fancy transparent screens, projecting both the audiences shadows and filmed material. I especially appreciated the unapologetic and unshocking everydayness of the people appearing in the videos. 

Will the laser slice them?
Margareta Hesse: No barrier

I lost myself, which is nice
Alessandro Lupi: Antiego

People in layers
Katja Heitmann: Perpetuum

Distracted focus on my part

The main point about Sebastian Kite’s Inner Time for me was the light it shed on its surroundings, sweeping the courtyard of Thon-Dittmer-Palais, and how the audience reacted to it. Which was by standing still, staring at and enjoying the brightness. And while doing so, forming a mesmerizing shadow play on the walls and ground around them. There was this certain meta level in the artwork, watching people watching the artwork, thus becoming a part of it. The whole hoo-ha of the machinery rotating the light, looking like a movie set from Dune going Mad Max, just felt a tad unnecessary, even though I do realise that was the thing I was supposed to look at.

Basically, I hated cabosanroque & Studio Animal’s Trànsit. I did like the setting, a matrix of traffic lights, and expected something Totally New. Alas, it was mathematical flickering all over again, although with unexpected device. Headache in the form of light. Still, I’m so, so happy to see artworks that are not meant to just please the audience (mind you, there were many people who did enjoy the piece). This is exactly a kind of risk that festivals should be taking, instead of playing it nice and safe to the extreme. 

Nice shadows, eh?
Sebastian Kite: Inner Time

A traffic police's nightmare
cabosanroque & Studio Animal: Trànsit

A three course mapping meal

The choice of projection mapping pieces in the festival was almost a pedagogical one, presenting three quite different artworks. They all had very different approaches to their canvasses: serving, commenting and dominating. 

Metatecture obviously had the architecture as the starting point, which is often case when it comes to projection mapping. I’m not really sure what to think of the voluntary servitude to architecture that so, so many mappers have lately expressed to me, but Daniel Rossa is a good servant, doting on the details of the façade, and caressing it with colour blocks of a most frugal graphic design style. There were the mandatory tiles popping out of the façade sequence, which always hurts me a little, but those were to be expected.

Liudmila Siewerski’s Zeitrisse was one of the bold moves of the festival. Let’s start with what is not there. There is no rush, no horror vacui nor material for ten artworks squeezed in one. Instead, Siewerski’s imagery is peaceful, patient and breathing. Her approach to architecture is one of a researcher’s. In addition to bringing out the shapes of Neupfarrkirche today, the artwork spans centuries and the whole city of Regensburg in form of archival images.

I would have said that projecting on leafless trees is a huge mistake, but Javier Riera’s The Luminous Grove proved me oh so very wrong. The bare trees became a mesh instead of a solid surface, making the projection appear on layers, and making its black more of a void than just a lack of colour. For a semi abstract black and white geometric material Riera used, this was a spot on combination, making the masses of light move, appear and disappear like choreographed ghosts. Mesmerising and beautiful!

The facade crumbles, as one does
Daniel Rossa: Metatecture

A breeze of light and a brave moment of near-emptiness
Liudmila Siewerski: Zeitrisse

Geometry meets nature
Javier Riera: The Luminous Grove

Women not doing cute stuff

You know how flowers have been a conveniently cute subject for female artists throughout the Western art history (if women are mentioned in the first place)? Well, Nika Erjavec’s Transmitted was quite flowery, yes, but not cute at all. The trembling twigs unsynchronised with the light flickering in lightning speed, made one see colours like in a broken TV. Quite a punk approach to flowers. Much appreciated.

Vanessa Hafenbrädl’s No Flag, with speaking female heads projected on flags, was as political as it gets. Even if I didn’t understand the German words, I could tell we are talking feminism now. The combination of determined women projected on flags under the mercy of wind was interesting indeed.

And then some beauty of dysfunction. Slabs of fluorescent tubes flickered like fluorescents do in movies, right before something horrible happens, which gave Livia Ribichini’s Sagittarius A a somewhat ominous aura to the artwork. A very in your face piece, not giving a damn about prettiness.

A new kind of a Twiggy
Nika Erjavec: Transmitted

Talking in the air
Vanessa Hafenbrädl: No Flag

Nothing horrible happened, I'm afraid
Livia Ribichini: Sagittarius A

More to hate, pretty please

Not all the artworks in the festival were specifically rough, political or straightforward, but there were many enough to see a pattern. And it is exactly what we need: an edgy punk light festival, and RE.LIGHT could be just that. 

I sure hope I’ll find more artworks to hate in the next edition!

Six whines about light festival websites

You know how LinkedIn is such a super positive place? For counterbalance, I'm there merely for whining. My latests whines have been about light festivals' websites – or lack thereof. To not bring you any joy, here are my pet peeves regarding light festival websites, combined. 

Number 1: Who’s the curator?

Even if there wouldn’t be a designated curator per se, there’s always someone or some people who decide which artworks are shown in the festival, and if there’s any professionalism involved, also why they are shown. Not telling their names on festival's website might give the idea that there is not really idea behind the event, or that you have no respect for it.

Also, I really like to meet with the curators of the festivals I visit, please don’t make finding their names difficult!

Number 2: When is the festival?

“We’ll be back next year!” is a cheerful but not too informative greeting on a website. Even if the exact dates of the next edition wouldn’t be decided, an approximate timeframe and maybe even the number of days the festival is supposed to last gives a good enough idea. In the sad occasion of the edition being the last, that is also a good thing for the audience to know.

I mean, surely I’m not the only one who plans their travels according to light art events? And yes, I just updated our own little festival’s website, since this info was indeed missing.

Number 3: Where is the festival?

“In the beautiful area of Xhwffuhfw” might give an idea for a resident of the city of Udfjfjvnn, but not for a visitor looking for a nice hotel close to the boogie and wondering how many nights they would need to stay to see the whole thing properly. And which shoes to pack. The specific route maps are not needed for this, but an approximate area map and an estimate of the walking needed would be helpful. As soon as it’s decided, that is, I’m not a monster. Maps of previous years, even if they are not exactly accurate anymore, give an idea, too.

Not many other people book their accommodation a year ahead, I guess, but some (=me) do. It’s not that I’m addicted to traveling or anything, it’s just cheaper that way. Yes. Really. That's all there is to that.

Number 4: OMG at least tell who the artists are!

This is a rarity, but all the more annoying peeve. It does is seem like an impossibility, I mean who in their right mind could leave out the names of the artists of a festival? But I swear I’ve been to a light art event where the artists were unmentioned not only on the website, but also on-site. Just the sponsors were deemed important enough to be printed on the info plaques by the artworks. Still shivering in horror. Anyway, it is proper to mention the artist whenever there is a photo of an artwork published, even if it’s not the presentation page of the said artist / artwork.

And now I have to check everything I’ve ever posted to be a person of my word. Oh well.

Number 5: Lost history.

I do realise that curators with bad memory are not the main target group of light festival webpages. But there are artists linking to pages from their CV’s, audience members wanting to relive past editions and researchers on so many levels, who’d really appreciate that the previous editions would stay online. And yes, there are the curators with bad memory. We all appreciate webpages with Archive section, where we can dive into past editions, filling our minds and spreadsheets with details of festivals past.

Number 6: Have a website!

Or at least a permanent address.

Especially festivals that are run by larger organisations have a tendency of burying the festival info somewhere into the abyss of the organisation's event calendar’s subcategories’ underbelly. Like a dragonfly, the info pops up for a short period of time as the festival approaches and then withers away, hibernating un-searchable, until the next year it resurrects as a new page with a new address.

How annoying for people looking for info during the page hibernation or are trying to keep up with their bookmarks. Or have a map of festivals they are trying to keep updated. No, there’s nothing weird in having that kind of map.

Serpentine Nostalgia and Functioning Interactivity

Twist and Shine by Kaleider has found its niche of actually playable interactive lightartwork, that is also nice to watch and certainly looks good in pictures. I find the interactivity the most remarkable part of the artwork: it’s not overdone, it’s built with the audience in mind and leaves room for the imagination. Visually the piece is impressive, especially en masse and well-placed, but there is also room for a more profound use of colour.

Do touch the art

Twist and Shine consists of rubik snake -like constructions, that the audience can twist to build their own artworks, and / or play with them. As you can guess from the name, the snakes shine as well, slowly changing their colours in non-synchronised order.

Interactivity in light art is often technology-based, and it might be somewhat complicated for the audience to understand how it works. More than once I’ve seen a desperate artist biting their nails, observing the audience waving, jumping and shouting about, not quite getting how to interact with the piece. And if they do, they probably don’t realize how exactly their action makes any difference.

With Twist and Shine, the only barrier to overcome is to believe you actually are allowed to touch (and twist) art. After that, it is very clear what to do and apart from safety, there are no rules nor is there a right way to interact. You build whatever you want to build.

One could think that this interactivity is targeted especially for kids – which it might be – but it did appeal to adults alike. This might be for nostalgic rubik-serpentine reasons, at least partly. The artwork also invited to cooperation, and I’ve seen a lot of happy families and friend-making while observing it. There’s also something very communal in the fact that one starts where the previous player left off and builds on it.

New friends appearing from a tunnel

More is more…

I do admit being a fan of minimalism, but sometimes volume is essential for an art piece. I visit loads of light festivals, so I have had the chance to follow the evolution of Twist and Shine's growth, and significance of its placement. It shows just how numbers sometimes do matter, as do the surroundings. 

I first saw Twist and Shine in Hämeenlinna, Finland, at Valoilmiö Festival in 2023. The artwork was placed on the main square, an exposed and busy site. The area was temporarily fenced, which didn’t quite add to its cosiness. At that point, there were about twenty twistable snakes – let’s call them items, shall we. In the plain square, the interactivity of the items wasn’t too obvious, since in their sparseness, they looked more like art pieces to be observed than tools to be played with. People still did, after some enticement.

My next encounter with Twist and Shine was in Rauma, at Lumen festival in 2025. Even though the number of items was the same, the site was a semi-secluded inner yard, a consistent place for playing. And play people did, even if some ushering was needed.

In Lux Helsinki in 2026 the number of items was rocketed to one hundred. The area was a small park, peaceful and secured by snowdrifts. The abundance of material made it easy to grab one without hesitation and start playing. Even I took my turn in proving the functionality of the shiny snakes. The volume also made the artwork turn into an environment to jump in instead just watching it from a distance.

Almost no bystanders – this doesn't happen often in Finland

… as is less

I am usually somewhat suspicious about the highly over-used rainbow effect of programmable led lights. Using every possible hue just because you can is not always the most elegant choice. In this case, however, the sheer volume of units makes the artwork more of a generally and cheerfully colourful entity than an annoyingly blinking object – here, too, the volume works for the good of the art piece. 

On the other hand, I’d love to see other, more confined colour editions, too. Given a chance and technics allowing, Twist and Shine could evolve into a piece of three-dimensional, changing and moving colour composition, something I can’t recall seeing before. But, even if I'll never get my artsy colours version, I'll be happy, and most likely, to see Twist and Shine and again.

A radical Twist and Shine user

Pretty ordinary art: Light art and its alleged lack of criticism

This article was originally published (in Finnish) in Kritiikin Uutiset magazine on 11 December 2025. It has also been published in Ars Photonica.

"There’s no criticism of light art" is a phrase I often hear. It may be true. What should this criticism be like and what should its writer know? And why should one even write reviews of light art?

"Almost the 'purest' material in art"

What exactly is light art? For some it means a spectacular light show, for others a beautiful reflection of light from a window, or a cosy candlelight. I have been pushing the definition I developed for my thesis, with some success: light art is visual art in which light plays a defining role, either as a material or a theme. Light is not present just for the sake of visibility, and its quality matters.

Sounds simple, but isn’t.

The world-embracing claim that all art is light art, because without light the work would not even be seen, is not true. Lighting conditions affect artworks, but visibility is just one of the functions of light. If light is not significant for the content of the work, the work is not light art.

Light art is not a separate genre from other visual arts, but can take almost any form. Most light art works may be classified as sculptures or installations, but a light art work can also be a performance, a land art work, a painting, an intervention or a textile art work. For example, the creations by Maija Lavonen (1931–2023) that contain optical fibers, seen in last year's exhibition at the Architecture and Design Museum, easily fall into the category of light art.

In some definitions, light art is limited to electric light – without arguments whatsoever. Sun, fire or other natural light can be material for light art, and even darkness is not always necessary. The gallery for Anu Raatikainen's Phototaxis exhibition (2024) was Pitkäkoskenniitty field, bathing in sunlight, and some of the works were based on the reflections of Sun.

 

Maija Lavonen's exhibition Silent Monuments (2025) at the Museum of Architecture and Design combined textile and light art. Photo: Mia Kivinen

Light art is not just about large festival works, it can be very small, subtle and even conceptual. Jenni Eskola's chlorophyll paintings, which are changed by light over time, were included in the Material Light light art exhibitions (2020 and 2021), based on the defining role of light in the work. So light art does not necessarily even have to have its own light to shine.

 

In Anu Raatikainen's Phototaxis exhibition (2024), Raatikainen used sunlight as the material for her works. Photo: Mia Kivinen

"There’s a likelihood of light art and go-go dancers to be seen in the space"

Light art has many related genres and they are often confused with each other. Drawing the line is not exactly simple.

The clearest difference between light art and lighting design is that lighting design takes place in a performance and serves the performance. The easiest way to distinguish lighting design from light art is to check whether there are performers in the space, perhaps even on a stage. No matter how excellent or unique the lighting design is, this does not make it light art. It is not a question of quality or prestige, but of classification.

Borderline cases here include, for example, light-based performance art and performances that take place in an existing light art work. The artwork Artgeologists (2019) by the art collective KUNST, with its eerily glowing performers, falls interestingly between performance and installation.

The difference between lighting and light art is also related to the instrumental value: the task of lighting is to present the illuminated object in a certain, pre-defined way, usually pretty, which is not the task of art. It is especially difficult to draw the line in architectural lighting: sometimes the lighting creates a completely different impression when it gets dark than how the building looks during the day. The facade work of the Folks Hotel in Helsinki (2020) by Sun Effects functions both as lighting and as an artwork in itself. It uses light to draw an entity that repeats the shapes of the building, in its own unique way, that would also work sans the house.

It is even more difficult to draw a line between light art and video art, and the distinction is not made easier by the fact that video art is also a regular guest at light art events. Both belong to the media arts and use some of the same equipment; the light of a video projector can be a figurative image or an abstract light shape and a monitor can be an image source or a shining light cube. As a rough guideline: in video art the content of the image is more important and in light art the light itself plays the leading role.

Terike Haapoja has puzzled classifiers with several artworks of hers, the most famous of which is probably Entropy (2004), which has also been seen at light art events. In it, a horse carcas cooling down after death is filmed with a thermal camera, and the image becomes more unrecognizable and abstract the cooler the horse gets.

Sometimes decorative lights and festive lighting are also called light art, but I assume that's just frivolous foolery, stiffen my upper lip and walk on by.

Artgeologists (2017), seen at the FLASH1 Biennial, by the artist collective KUNST, was both an installation and a performance. Between performances, the glowing costumes were charged with lights in the exhibition space. Photo: Hannu Iso-Oja

 

"A huge final spurt to the light art event"

The traditional division in light art has been festival and gallery art. In this division, festival art is big and spectacular, while gallery art is intimate and profound. This division, which has never been entirely clear, has become even more blurred as artists have started to work in both fields. Festivals also come in different sizes and styles; I’ve curated both the largest and the smallest light art festivals in Finland. Thesmallest Vallila (2025) was less than one percent of size, budget and audience of Lux Helsinki, and quite literally more minimalist in style as well.

However, the division still has its reasons.

A large part of light art festivals are organised by cities and municipalities, and their most important goal is to provide pleasant experiences for as large a part of the tax payer population as possible and to appeal to tourists as well. And light does appeal. The most visible difference between light art and other visual arts is its popularity with the audience. It is also its biggest curse. Few galleries have to consider their exhibition selections based on the logistics of hundreds of thousands of people. Also, few galleries choose their artworks with the goal of the whole city liking them.

From this point of view, it is risky to choose the most experimental cutting edge of light art for events aimed at the general public, and the focus is usually on visual splendour. Especially at the most crowded events, the works must be large and possible to be experienced quickly, with the crowd pushing the viewer towards the next artwork. This does not exclude profound content, but it does limit the choice of artworks.

"Beyond Intellectualization"

The alleged entertainment-heaviness of light art is a sore point among light art professionals, especially at festivals. Curators discuss content and lack thereof among themselves, but still the artworks that end up at festivals are often those that rely on visual impact or technical ingenuity.

Festival works can also be small and subtle. Salla Salin's site-specific work Rift (2025) at Thesmallest Vallila light art event 2025. Photo: Mia Kivinen

With some of the artworks, we could talk openly about entertainment. Entertainment has its own, strong value that is easy to justify, especially in these endlessly bleak and apocalyptic times. Why not just give people a moment of delight instead of requiring them to dwell in the deepest of thoughts?

The industry of light art has shaped up here. As if by a common decision, the custom of naming events either light events or light art events, depending on their goals in terms of artistic values, has spread. Criticism should be in line with this. Just as a theater critic approaches a farce and a contemporary theater piece with different expectations, so should they with light entertainment and light art. There’s nothing wrong with a spectacle, as long as it is done properly.

"A trend approaching a photo-theoretical observation tool"

The question of valuing light art is also related to who makes it. And that field is a broad one. There’s no formal training program for light art, but individual courses and training with some relation to light can be found all over Finland. 

Traditionally, light art artists have been some kind of gyro gearlooses of the art world and its fringes, who have done what they like and supported each other in technical and artistic issues. There has been a close connection to kinetic art; for example, long-time light artist Annikki Luukela (b. 1944) has been working in the Dimensio group, known especially for kinetic art, and was its founding member. The kinetic works of Eino Ruutsalo (1921–2001) were also light art works.

Jaakko Niemelä's kinetic light work Model of an imagined structure (2010) projected onto the wall of the MO Museum at the Vilnius Light Festival 2025. Photo: Mia Kivinen

As lighting design education has developed, it has become a foundation for many artists. Lighting design background unites, among others, Kaisa Salmi (b. 1968), Terike Haapoja (b. 1974), Alexander Salvesen (b. 1990) and Jani-Matti Salo (b. 1984). Light unites many art genres and the group of artists who use light is also diverse: in addition to the above mentioned, it includes architects, graphic designers, set designers, video visualizers, engineers, photographers and musicians. To begin with. The groups have remained quite separate, but in recent years – especially due to the influence of the Finnish Light Art Society FLASH – they have started to find each other. This can only be beneficial, for everyone.

Not all artists who use light use the title of light artist. Often this is because artists work with other materials as well, but the stigma of light art also plays a part. One artist vehemently denied that he was doing light art, even though I caught him red-handed designing a work that had only light as  material. Obviously, I don't understand this light art shaming, but the artists decide for themselves what their title is or how they name their art.

"Light art can sometimes be amazingly direct and efficient"

Why aren't there any reviews written about light art? This is a kind of a trick question, since reviews are indeed written about light art, it’s just not called light art in them. And when it is, the text is usually a blurb or a piece of news, not a review.

There are a considerable number of undercover light artists in Finland. Usually, for example Jaakko Niemelä (b. 1959), Maaria Wirkkala (b. 1954), Vappu Rossi (b. 1976) or the Grönlund-Nisunen artist duo are not marketed as the leading light artists, even though they often use light in their works. And they use it brilliantly, I might add. The expression light art is not necessarily mentioned in the review, and it thus cannot be found by searching for light art online. When these reviews are taken into account, light art does not necessarily suffer from underrepresentation any more than other art forms – especially when you consider the ever-decreasing number of reviews in general.

Festivals and larger artworks, especially those displayed in public spaces, often end up on city news instead of the culture section. Because of this emphasis, the writer rushes to say perhaps a few off-handed words about art, in order to get to the real point, which is the number of visitors and lamps and electricity consumption, and in the winter also the cold weather and bringing light into the darkness. There are a lot of these fluff-like texts written about light art.

I believe and hope that Maaria Wirkkala is not asked how many lamps there are in her exhibitions.

"In addition to food for the eyes, fuel for thoughts"

In recent years, light art, which is openly called light art, has also found its way into the halls of museums and galleries, in group exhibitions especially dedicated to light art. Lux & Umbra at WAM Turku City Art Museum in 2024 and Boisterous Light at Museum Center Taika in 2023 brought together works by artists from different backgrounds specifically in the context of light. The FLASH biennials of the Finnish Light Art Society FLASH have presented Finnish contemporary light art in three editions since 2017, and the fourth edition, New Darkness (2024), expanded the coverage to older works, too. The Material Light exhibitions of FLASH, MUU ry and the Northern Photography Center (2020 and 2021) focused on light as an element. In addition, individual artists have held exhibitions focused on light art.

 At the first FLASH Biennial of the Finnish Light Art Society FLASH in Suomenlinna in 2017, Grönlund-Nisunen's site-specific work Critical Level was placed in the shipyard's empty pump well. Photo: Tommi Grönlund

It would be difficult to write about these exhibitions without specifically considering light as an art medium, and they cannot be accounted for by an audience report. They have indeed led to a slow but steady movement of articles about light art towards the culture sections of magazines. Even the prestigious Finnish art magazine Taide has published Pessi Rautio's review of the light art exhibitions of the 2023–2024 season.

Rautio has also paid commendable attention to light art over the years, and he is not the only one. Several names come to mind: Rosa Kuosmanen relates light art to other art genres and art history in an elegant way in her reviews. Kulttuuritoimitus magazine has reported on light events in an interesting way, especially with the pen of Päivi Vasara and Eli Harju, and Sanna Lipponen has approached light art from the perspective of a member of the audience.

“In the end, only light”

Light art needs criticism. Both inciting and challenging. Perhaps even more of the latter. What should a critic know about light art, then? Basically, no more or less than about other art forms. However, there are a few light-specific wishes.

It is good for the critic to be familiar with the scope and diversity of the field of light art. Any comment about "light art in general" is usually as moot as "painting in general".

When writing about light art, the focus is often on the technology, which is not always essential to the content of the work. Exhibition texts also repeatedly concentrate on the new and wonderful equipment and the scale of the work. One of the tasks of criticism is to challenge this emphasis and ask what the artwork actually wants to say.

Light art is not a separate, special art form, although it is sometimes treated as such – for better or worse. Light is a common art material, and light art is art among other art forms. It deserves the same rigorous and understanding gaze.

Do not let us off easy.

 

• • •

More information about light art:

The Finnish Light Art Society FLASH and SARV have jointly and separately held various training courses on light art and its criticism. It is worth following the information from both! Information on light art has also been compiled on the Light Art Society's website .

Sources:

The essay uses as sources discussions with curator colleagues, artists who use light and critic Tuuli Penttinen-Lampisuo, reviews of light and other art published in Finland, as well as other articles, artworks and events seen, own experiences and Kivinen’s thesis for the Academy of Fine Arts, and the FLASH and SARV Light Art Criticism seminar on 23 November 2024.

The titles are taken from light art reviews and other light culture related articles.

Mia Kivinen is a Helsinki-based curator, teacher and advocate of light art.

All the Right Wrong Places

Lights on Romania elegantly demonstrates the meaning of venue for an artwork. 

Closer to You by Teodor Buruiană was not in a living room, which is great.

One of the things I have changed my mind about are touring light art works, showed in several festivals. I used to sneer at them, chuffing about unoriginality and copy-paste curating. Then it dawned to me that not everybody travels several light art festivals per year (or month) (week). It’s most likely the piece I’ve seen thrice the regular audience sees for the very first and only time. Also, it would be economically and ecologically stupid to build a possibly huge and expensive piece just for one show.

Also, venue matters. A lot. An artwork may change to an entirely different experience according to its location. This was elegantly demonstrated in Timișoara. Careful consideration of venues was one of the Lights On Romania festival’s perks. Let's see a few examples.

I do get my kicks from displaced objects. I'm sorry Luke Jerram's Gaia didn't make it to the festival, since it (and his Museum of the Moon) are my favourite examples of a basic thing becoming interesting by being in a totally wrong place. But here, I got a new approach to right / wrong places from Loomaland's swans of Electric Swan Ensemble. 

This is the closest I dared to go

I’ve seen the swans before in Berlin Light Festival, and I do admit it didn’t do much of an impression then. The swans were puddling in a shopping center’s geometrical pool, which is a wrong environment, I admit, but wrong in a wrong way. Also, the surrounding inflatable animals and overall hoodlum rendered the swans as showy toys. In Timișoara, however, the birds were in quite a natural habitat, swimming in the Bega river. And oh my, were they uncanny. Frightening, even. Now I paid more attention to movement of the androidic swans, which was amazingly naturelike. Not counting their ability to change colour, admittedly. The environment changed the artwork from a Tivoli decoration to an equivocal comment on nature, technology, future, and everything. At least for me.

The artwork was beautiful even with people in it

Another art piece elevated by environment was Squidshop’s Submergence. Last time I saw it in Jyväskylä WinterLight, in an indoors exhibition with several other artworks. It was nice then, yes, but seeing it in an derelict, roofless movie theatre was a totally different experience. The surrounding decay created a striking contrast to the tidy and premeditated twinkles of light. That kind of barren beauty just is not possible in a neutral environment. This was a playground no more, but an eerily beautiful, breathtakingly melancholic art installation.

Some light exercise

In Pavol Truben's Under Pressure, life sized characters with glowy heads nearly bursting of stress are desperately trying to relax via yoga-like poses. It would have been quite obvious to place the piece in a gym or an office. But no, the ever lasting stretches were done in a walled garden. The ambiguous environment reflects the artwork both in a concrete way with its white walls but also its ambience. The lush, prestigious backyard is supposed to be relaxed, but it is all too well gardened to be really bohemian. The already humorous, if heartbreaking, artwork gains yet another jest from its milieu.

In addition to very well placed art objects, there were other great things about the Lights on festival, like a beautiful city, a humane amount of artworks, expanded program and super nice people. Especially Andi and Daniel, who took their time to show me around and gracefully tolerated my never ending blabber about light art. And made sure I had enough crisps at all times.