The 2024 Maire Gullichsen Prize has been awarded to the visual artist Emilia Tanner, who is known for her exceptionally skilled and subtle work. The Maire Gullichsen Prize is now being awarded for the 11th time. The art award is worth 10,000 euros.

Emilia Tanner (b. 1990) is a visual artist from Helsinki. She often uses paper as a material in artworks that deal with the themes of time, transience and perception. In Tanner’s art, paper is a three-dimensional material that can be shaped, consumed, and sculpted. Perception of distances, repetition, and discovering something new play a central role in her artistic thinking. Recently, Tanner has focused on installations and on working with light.

The Maire Gullichsen Prize Committee summed up its decision as follows: “The objecthood of traditional art prints is alien to Emilia Tanner’s artistic working process, which is dominated by light, repetition, and the transience of everything. The absence from her works of the glass and frames that usually protect paper artworks emphasizes their ethereal spaciousness and the elusive presence of inner meanings. Tanner’s intuitive mode of expression is understated and based on perception. Her degree work in the Gallery of the Academy of Fine Arts still contained references to paper as a part of the essential nature of a book, but, since then, paper has become more of a material that lets her contemplate space, distances, and light.

Tanner’s artistic thinking is governed by curiosity and wonder, by constantly experimenting she visualises encounters between time and light in her spatial works. In them, the endless repetition characteristic of minimalism changes from being a mechanical method to a meditative presence. The acceptance of chance as part of expression and the natural fragility of the paper, together with shifts in the light, make barely perceptible movements visible. As an artist, Emilia Tanner has her own powerful vision and integrity, qualities that are becoming increasingly rare nowadays, and which she focuses on regardless of prevailing trends and movements. She also has the ability and the perseverance necessary for interesting art to aspire to reach the unattainable, to make momentarily visible something that cannot be put into words.”

Tanner says receiving the award is a great honour and privilege: “It means recognition for my work and a chance to focus and immerse myself in my artistic working process. Above all, I get time to stop and explore the themes of my next works, as well as to experiment more freely with different materials in the studio.”

She is currently working with timed artificial light, and sees working with it as a natural continuation of her previous works. “For a long time, I have been fascinated by the idea of putting the material I frequently use – paper – to one side for a moment, and focussing more on immaterial light and shadow. Working with light is also linked to seeing and looking as an event, and to the perception of different distances. It is fascinating to think about how we perceive everything around us and, at the same time, wondering how much we fail to notice.”

Tanner’s works can next be seen in two collective exhibitions this spring, the first showing artist’s books at Gallery Duetto in April. At the end of May, her works will travel to Apeldoorn, The Netherlands, for an exhibition at the CODA Museum.

Emilia Tanner graduated with a Master of Fine Arts degree in printmaking from the Academy of Fine Arts of the University of the Arts Helsinki in 2021. Her art has been shown in Finland and abroad. Tanner’s works have been in collective exhibitions at Kunsthalle Helsinki (2023), Galerie Anhava (2022), and Forum Box Gallery (2020), as well as in a solo exhibition at Galleria Sinne (2022) and a duo exhibition at Kohta kunsthalle (2024). She has received the Finnish Art Society’s Ducat Prize for young artists (2023), the Héléne and Walter Grönqvist Foundation Award (2022), and a Stina Krook Foundation Award (2019).

Emilia Tanner. Photo Teemu Silván.

More about the artist and her works: www.emiliatanner.com
Instagram: @emilia_tanner

The Maire Gullichsen Prize is primarily awarded to a young art professional every other year or so. The prize cannot be applied for, instead, a multidisciplinary jury chooses the prizewinner on the basis of artistic expression, exhibition and studio visits, and conversations with the artist. In 2024, the members of the Maire Gullichsen Prize Committee were: MA Leif Jakobsson (Chair); textile designer, CEO Johanna Gullichsen; architect Kirsi Gullichsen, Harry Alanen, DPhil, and art critic Leena Kuumola.

The prize has previously been awarded to: Erik Creutziger (2022); Pekka Sassi (2020); Inka Kivalo (2018); Vesa-Pekka Rannikko (2007); Sandra Kantanen (2005); Nathalie Lahdenmäki (2002); Mari Rantanen (1997); Marjatta Oja (1993); Tor Arne (1991); and Pekka Pitkänen (1987).

Maire Gullichsen’s 80th Anniversary Fund was established in 1988, to commemorate the birthday of the prominent patron of the arts Maire Gullichsen (1907–1990), and is administered by the Alvar Aalto Foundation. Maire Gullichsen was a prominent advocate of modern art and architecture in Finland. As a founding member of Artek, she worked closely with Aino and Alvar Aalto. She and her husband Harry Gullichsen commissioned a private house to be designed by Aino and Alvar Aalto in Noormarkku. Villa Mairea, completed in 1939, is one of the most important works of modern architecture.

Further information:
Artist Emilia Tanner
emilia.tanner1@gmail.com
+358 44 9731130

Chair of Prize Committee Leif Jakobsson
jakobsson.leifverner@gmail.com
+358 440 304 099

Interview requests and media images:
Communications Manager Mirkka Vidgrén, Alvar Aalto Foundation
mirkka.vidgren@alvaraalto.fi
+358 40 168 5142