The Book of Hands
Käsikirja is a multidisciplinary event aimed at children from 4 years old onwards and their adults. The project focuses on exploring the significance of hands in various contexts and through different art disciplines. Participants will engage in activities such as drawing, dancing, crafting, and creating stories to explore the multifaceted role of hands in artistic expression, communication and every day life. Together we’ll also reflect about how we interact with each other, how we can care for and support each other with our hands.
As part of the project we produced a workbook - and interactive zine, which can be used during the session or independently at home. The publication is in four languages - Finnish, English, Ukrainian and Russian.
The events is organized with the support of The City of Espoo, the City of Vantaa, Helsinki City and the Arts promotion center Finland.
Languages: English, Finnish, Russian, Ukrainian
Working group: Anna Anisimova, children’s writer; Anastasia Artemeva, visual and socially-engaged artist; Tetiana Makhova, visual artist; Vera Lapitskaya, dance artist
Anastasia Artemeva (b.1989) is a visual and socially-engaged artist based in Helsinki. BA in Sculpture & Combined Media, Limerick School of Art & Design, Ireland (2012), MA Visual Culture & Contemporary Art. She works with textile, text, installation and photography. She is a diversity agent and a certified Dialogue cards facilitator.
Makhova Tetiana was born in 1987 in a small village in the Kherson region. Since childhood, she loved to draw and wanted to become an artist. She loves nature, fairy tales and mythology. This has always been reflected in her creative process. Higher education: - Kherson State University, bachelor's degree: Fine Arts, 2011 & Specialist degree: Fine Arts, Decorative Arts, Artistic Culture, 2012. For ten years after graduation, Makhova worked as a freelance artist, took part in exhibitions and festivals. Married. Mother of three children. During the military invasion in Ukraine on February 24, 2022, she found herself in deep within the occupied territory of Kherson region. After fleeing with her family to Finland, she began the restoration of her creative activity.
Since 2009, Vera Lapitskaya has worked both as an independent dance artist and in collaboration with various artists in Finland and internationally. She has implemented more than twenty dance projects aimed at different target groups. In her works Lapitskaya often combines dance and text, and creates works on the border between dance and theatre. In her artistic work she has been reimagining traditional art forms by pushing the borders and going beyond the surface of narrative meanings.Through the years she has been exploring a multi-layered proximity of human body to space, time, sounds, objects and environment. In her latest works Lapitskaya approached the following themes, among others: human loneliness and togetherness, identity, participation, difference, sameness, tolerance.
Anna Anisimova is a author of more than 13 books for children. She was born in 1983 in the small village Kropotkin in Eastern Siberia and spent her childhood there, among little mountains called «goltsy» and cedar elfin, in a very cold place where people mine gold—her book Kedrovyi Slonik (Cedar Little Elephant) tells about this place. Anna studied at Novosibirsk State University that is located in a Siberian scientific center called Akademgorodok. She is a journalist by diploma specialty. But while studying at the university Anna worked on the creation of newspapers for children and also she worked in the children's camps and created stories with children. Therefore when she started working as a journalist and editor she realized that writing for children is the thing that she like to do the most. So last ten years Anna works as a freelance-writer.
Käsikirja on monitaiteellinen tapahtuma, joka on suunnattu lapsille ja perheille. Projektin tavoitteena on pohtia, kuinka tärkeitä kädet ovat erilaisissa tilanteissa ja taiteen muodoissa. Yhdessä osallistujien kanssa luomme tarinoita, teemme käsitöitä, piirrämme ja tanssimme tutkiaksemme käsien monipuolista roolia taiteellisessa ilmaisussa, kommunikaatiossa ja arkipäivän elämässä. Pohdimme myös, miten vuorovaikutamme toistemme kanssa ja miten voimme hoitaa ja tukea toisiamme käsillämme.
Tapahtuma järjestetään Espoon kaupungin sekä Taiteen edistämiskeskuksen tuella.
Kielet: englanti, suomi, venäjä ja ukraina
Työryhmä: Anna Anisimova, lastenkirjailija; Anastasia Artemeva, visuaalinen ja yhteisötaiteilija; Tetiana Makhova, kuvataiteilija; Vera Lapitskaya, tanssitaiteilija