Emma Jääskeläinen began her studies in art at Kankaanpää Art School in 2011, where she specialised in performance art. She studied sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki, graduating with an MFA in Art in 2018. Jääskeläinen’s talent was already noticed when she was still a student. In 2019, she was the third artist to be invited to present a work in the series Kiasma Commission by Kordelin, a project to promote contemporary art funded by the Alfred Kordelin Foundation. Her multipart work, Proper Omelette, which comprised two stone sculptures, a textile work and a bronze sculpture, was exhibited in the vestibule and the first-floor gallery of the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma in Helsinki from late 2020 to early 2021. Jääskeläinen next received notable attention in 1921, when she was chosen as Young Artist of the Year 2022, and in connection with this award she held exhibitions in Tampere Art Museum and Kuntsi Museum of Modern Art in Vaasa.

Emma Jääskeläinen is known particularly for her large-scale sculptures with softly curving contours, in which she depicts fragments of the human body: hands, feet and mouths. Jääskeläinen uses different kinds of stone, Finnsheep wool, bronze and other metals, and she also uses combinations of these. Her favourite materials are various kinds of granite, marble and travertine like Viitasaari granite, Lappia Green Marble, Norwegian Rose Marble, Hermelin Marble, Travertino Noce and Rosa Asiago limestone. Jääskeläinen also often uses found stones and rubble from quarries in her works

Jääskeläinen’s idiom is based on bringing out the qualities and natural beauty of the different materials she uses, combining them and playing with contrasts and scale. Corporeality is an important basic element in her art. The central themes in Jääskeläinen’s works are connected with expressing the memory traces and experiences of the human body. Jääskeläinen has revealed the layers of the contents in her works in numerous interviews: Hands express many things, such as holding on to an invisible thought, the idle state of a being who is weary of playing, or fingers swollen from work. The hand is the outermost part of the body, which we use to take hold of, touch and encounter things. It emphasises what my sculptures are about: making and re-making things by hand, a slow dialogue with the materials and the revelation of sensory experiences.

The Layers exhibition features two of Emma Jääskeläinen’s works: Repose (2021) is made of Norwegian Rose Marble, travertine and Finnsheep wool, and At Her Fingertips (2023) of Norwegian Rose Marble, found stones and iron.

Artwork: Emma Jääskeläinen, Repose, 2021

Photo of artwork: Vesa Aaltonen
Photo of artist: Paavo Lehtonen