Pilvi Takala’s primary artistic practice is practice in its most direct sense. Takala carries out interventions in everyday life, using her body as artistic material, placing it in humorous predicaments. Her own feelings evolving in the course of an intervention, often-nuanced shades of embarrassment, reveal the contours of society’s expectations. Her works clearly show that it is often possible to learn of the implicit rules of a social situation only by its disruption. Takala mixes in her work the reality of documented actions with staged portraiture. She quotes and stretches the limits of different genres including the one of being a performance artist, a director, and a documentary maker.

Pilvi Takala (born 1981 in Helsinki, Finland) lives and works in Helsinki and Istanbul. Takala received an MFA from the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts and was artist-in-residence at Rijksakademie. Her awards include Dutch Prix de Rome 2011; Finnish State Prize for Visual Arts; and Emdash Award 2013. Her solo exhibitions include Bonniers Konsthall, Stockholm; Site Gallery, Sheffield; Künstlerhaus Bremen; Kunsthalle Erfurt; Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki; Turku Art Museum; Kunsthalle Lissabon; and Sorlandets Kunstmuseum, Norway. Her work has been shown in MoMA PS1 and New Museum, New York; Palais de Tokyo, Paris; S.M.A.K., Ghent; Kunsthalle Basel; De Hallen Haarlem; Wiels, Brussels; 4th Moscow Biennial; Witte de With, Rotterdam; 4th Bucharest Biennial; 5th Berlin Biennial; and the 9th Istanbul Biennial.