Finnish artist Hanna Vihriälä creates surprising and sensuous sculptures from everyday materials such as plastic beads, candy and sand. In Same Moment of Pleasure, her first solo exhibition in Sweden, Gothenburg Museum of Art presents both earlier works and new pieces created especially for the museum.
In this interview, Vihriälä reflects on material fragility, desire, comfort and control – and on how her works enter a dialogue with the museum’s collection.
Please tell us more about your artistic practice – what questions occupy you, and what materials do you work with?
– I have always been interested in the space between sculpture, painting, and graphic expression. My work explores the tension between permanence and fragility – in materials, but also in human experience.
Many of my works begin with personal observations, but they touch on emotions that are shared: happiness, sorrow, hope, uncertainty. I am interested in how materials can carry those fragile states.
You use materials such as candy, gravel, and acrylic beads. What draws you to these materials?
– The material is never just a surface or a technique. It is part of the meaning of the work. I am drawn to contradictions. When I work with heavy themes or large-scale installations, I may use fragile, playful or everyday materials such as hot glue, candy, beads or crushed stones from the sidewalk. That contrast becomes important.
Many of my installations are made for public spaces or in response to a specific exhibition space. At the same time, I am interested in small, intimate details – moments that relate to the space almost like jewelry.
Please tell us more about your newly produced works in the exhibition. How have you been inspired by the museum’s collection?
– I was inspired by many works in the collection, but Landskap från Öland by Vera Nilsson and Vårplöjning by Nils Kreuger had a particularly strong impact on me. Both works resonated with themes that often appear in my own practice: vulnerability, strength, desire, control, and the tensions that shape everyday life.
Several of the new works draw directly from these impressions. One piece, Ölandsvägen, uses materials associated with cosmetics, such as blush, to create the image of a long road, echoing the emotional landscape and fragility I found in Landskap från Öland.
Two other works, Comfort and Flame, explore different forms of longing and uncertainty. Comfort is a hammock woven from Swedish candy strings (godissnören), a material that evokes reward, pleasure and emotional comfort, while revealing how fragile and unreliable those promises can be. Flame, inspired by Vårplöjning, centres on a small fire surrounded by drifting smoke. The work balances beauty and danger, reflecting how emotions, desires or states of mind can quietly grow beyond our control.
How does it feel to exhibit in Sweden and at the Gothenburg Museum of Art for the first time?
– I feel deeply grateful. I love the museum’s collection and am excited to place my work in dialogue with both the collection and the museum space. Many of my recent works explore the contradictions of being a woman in the Nordic countries. How can we remain open, caring and vulnerable while also being independent, ambitious and expected to lead?
I am curious to see how Swedish visitors relate to these themes.
What will audiences encounter in the exhibition? What kind of experience do you want to convey?
– Many of my works begin with a moment when one emotion colours everything I see. Recent pieces explore desire, shame, control and the conflicts that appear when our actions and values no longer align. For example, G-Mercedes functions as a temple, a dream and an illusion. A luxury car has little to do with my own values or daily reality, yet it captures something real about the endless cycle of wanting more.
The work asks questions rather than offering answers. What do our desires reveal about us? And why do certain dreams remain so powerful, even when we know they may never satisfy us?
Read more about the exhibition.
Hero Image: The work ”Comfort” by Hanna Vihriälä.