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Pilvi Takala

Pilvi Takala’s video works are based on performative interventions in which she researches specific communities and institutions to question social structures. In her practice she shows that implicit normative rules for behaviour are often only revealed through disruption. For example, in “Bag Lady”, Takala walked around a shopping mall with a large amount of cash in a transparent bag: Staff became uncomfortable and visitors who were worried about the safety of the money persuaded the artist to hide it. For the project “Real Snow White”, the artist tried to enter Disneyland dressed as Snow White: Employees refused to let her in, arguing that she was not employed by the theme park and therefore did not answer to the company, but might do “something bad” in the character’s image. Takala’s performance called attention to the absurd logic of appealing to Snow White’s “real character” as well as Disneyland’s extreme discipline.

Sometimes Takala works more explicitly with groups. In “The Committee”, a work created by the artist after winning the Emdash Award, she invited children aged eight to twelve to come up with ideas for how to spend £7,000 of the prize money (the children spent it on a bouncy castle). Another example is a recent performance called “Close Watch”. Takala worked for six months as a security guard at a shopping center, after which she invited her former colleagues to take part in a participatory theater workshop to reenact difficult work situations with the help of professional actors.