Fellow NOE artist and ArtSpace curator Mark Maher interviewed Tatu Tuominen about his work.

You use your own “personal life” snapshots as the starting point of your hands-on multimedia constructions. Does it matter that they are your own snapshots? Why not use someone else’s?

I think in the social practice of snapshot photography and family albums people tend to construct a coherent narrative of their lives by taking a pocket camera out in particular situations and selecting certain type of photos for their family album. I think they do this even though (or perhaps precisely because) life itself is often chaotic and can often seem to be only a series of events that are unconnected and without unifying meaning.

Usually photo albums depict the happy surface of life: birthday parties, holidays abroad and so on. They showcase the where and when of us having fun – and with who.

People’s photo albums resemble one another quite a lot. The photos – people, situations and places – are interchangeable. For the viewer it doesn’t matter if it features my friends, or somebody else’s. But for me it does. I use my own snapshots as the starting point of my pieces because I’m making an interpretation of the situation – of the frozen moment, that the camera has captured. I try to bring something to the work that is beyond the camera’s reach.

Is a part of your message concerned with demystifying the role and personaeof “artist”?

Yes it is, but it’s also about mystifying everyday life. In my works I’m trying to portray more than the actual subject matter. I’m trying to give the viewer an opportunity to see more than through the lens of a pocket camera – the atmosphere, the feeling. Even though the starting point of my work, the snapshot, is seemingly meaningless and banal, I hope the work itself becomes something more.

How is your visually rich and materially beautiful way of working particularly well suited to your chosen subject matter?

Since the subject matter itself has an everyday quality to it, I want the final artifact to be unique. I want the viewer to have a feeling that they exist only there and then – in that particular place and time. When viewed at close range I want them to look luxurious. I want something to be exposed only when you have the courage to come close. The rough feel of the fibery Nepalese paper, the glass-like high-glossy surface of the resin, the spattered spray-painted gradient, together offers an alternate subject matter.

I also want to rise to the challenge posed by today; to, let’s say, the field of painting. This is why I use materials such as ready-mixed enamel spray-paint and industrial resin.

Tags: Interview, Mark Maher, Tatu Tuominen

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