Pilvi Takala

Pilvi Takala (born 1981, Helsinki) is a performance artist presenting candid camera as art.

She was educated at the Institute of Fine Arts from 2000–2001, had Bachelor in Fine Art (2005) and Master of Fine Arts (2006) from the Academy of Fine Arts, Helsinki.

In 2004 she spent six months at Glasgow School of Art on an exchange programme.

In the recent years Takala is moving from country to country, having lived and performed in Scotland, the Netherlands and Turkey.

Takala's initial work focuses on interventions in everyday life.

She treats her body as an artistic material, using it in different predicaments.

By doing this she shows that her feelings are evolving in the course of an intervention to reveal the different expectations of society.

Takala mixes in her work the reality of documented actions with staged portraiture.

Her works clearly show that it is often possible to learn of the implicit rules of a social situation only by its disruption.

In her video works based on performative interventions, Takala researches specific communities to explore social structures and questions the normative rules of behavior in different contexts.

Her works explore conduct enforced but not necessarily written down or discussed – social unspoken rules that are exposed only when someone like Takala runs counter them.

For her early slide show installation and artist's book Bag Lady (2006) she wandered for a week in a Berlin shopping mall with a lot of cash in a transparent plastic bag to observe the reaction of the people around: suspicion from security guards and disdain from shopkeepers.

In another work of her, an installation and video project The Trainee (2008), Takala secretly filmed herself sitting motionless and doing nothing or riding the whole day long in the elevator during her internship in the marketing department at accountancy firm Deloitte.

The artwork aimed to shake up everyday life in the office and show other employees’ reactions to Takala's unconventional working methods.

Her actions made other coworkers uneasy and resulted in them report HR manager about her behavior.

In Real Snow White (2009) Takala dressed herself as Snow White and attempted to buy a ticket to enter Euro Disney.

The video reveals the inability of Euro Disney employees to adequately explain why she can't enter like any other visitor who wants to visit the theme park.

Takala won the Dutch Prix de Rome in 2011 and the Emdash Award in 2013.

Her works have been exhibited in various exhibitions worldwide, most recently in London, Aarhus and Glasgow.

She is known best for being in time-based media.

Takala lives in Helsinki and Berlin.

Pilvi Takala was born and grew up in Helsinki.

In 2013 Takala won Frieze Foundation Embash Award and established a committee of children aged from 8 to 12 to decide how to spend £7,000 out of £10,000 awarded to her.

During the project called The committee she observed kids’ decision making methods through a series of workshops.

As a result, the Committee made a decision to create ‘a five-star bouncy castle’.

Takala calls her giving money to these kids and the knowledge that children have control and reactions this causes in the world ‘a performative action’.

In her recent video installation The Stroker (2018) filmed at Second Home, a co-working space in London, Takala moves through the building and greets the members of Second Home gently touching them on the arm or shoulder.

These gestures of care and attention subvert established rules of office conduct, provoking some strong reactions such as visible discomfort, nervousness and tension that are reenacted through facial expressions, bodily movements, silence or awkward verbal exchanges.

By touching people Takala probes at the complexities of personal boundaries and individual attitudes toward touch, particularly in the workplace.

Her aim is to challenge some kind of boundary in non-aggressive way.