Hämeenlinna Art Museum is looking for new visitors from families with children. The museum has a space where even a baby can talk, talk or just play around.
An adult has to go into his container to get into the work of art through the smallest opening. In it, you can briefly remember what it was like to be small and look at the world from the bottom up.
The dark and quiet space is located on the ground floor of the Lohrmann building of the Hämeenlinna Art Museum.
The tortuous paths of the babies were a surprise
It is a spatial work made by artists from Pori, called *Ryömi, konti – message about a baby*. The facility is available to museum visitors all year round and you do not need to purchase an entrance ticket.
On the square pillows lying on the floor, the little ones in the family can play, dance or just play around.
Crawl, crawl was created when the artists of the Children’s Culture Center followed the movements of babies using an action camera in a color bath workshop. The routes covered by the babies were copied and knitted onto the floor cushions with orange lines.
Babies seek contact with video babies moving on the wall
Kruunupää has cooperated with babies for twenty years. So the center’s six artists wanted to highlight the little babies, because there are hardly any art exhibitions for them.
Before Hämeenlinna, the exhibition has been seen in Pori and Jyväskylä.
– This is a traveling exhibition. We try to recycle this internationally as well, Päivi Setälä reveals.
The spatial work was opened in the Hämeenlinna Art Museum during the child’s rights week. In the work, the babies themselves can use their power, because this time they are the actors.
– Babies cannot tell what a baby is. I wish that adults could stop by the baby and think about what the baby’s gestures basically mean, urges Sanna Pajunen.
The end wall of the spatial work is filled with a video wall, where orange-clad babies are criss-crossing. The babies visiting the exhibition also react to the babies walking in the video.
– The work was one where the children could go and do, and there was no need to be careful. The children were very excited, says Jussila.
The museum hopes to have families with children as its customers
There are fewer and fewer babies being born in Finland. The Römi, Konti exhibition makes you stop and pay attention to babies and their world.
– Babies are part of this community just like us. We adults have things to learn from babies, just like babies do from us. I think that art museums are now in such a period of infancy, says Päivi Setälä.
Hämeenlinna Art Museum is looking for new groups of visitors from families with children. The museum has sent an invitation to visit the museum to around 400 local families who have had children this year.
– Museums get new customers and parents of children find the art museum. Families can see how art museums can be good with even a small child. When families experience the museum as an attractive place, they will discover other exhibitions as well, believes Päivi Setälä.
Mother Mari Jussila greeted with joy the prospect of the role of babies in the museum environment.
– It’s a good sign that everyone is welcome to such events.