Kati Toivanen
Identity informed by childhood experience is a key theme in the art of Kati Toivanen. Through photography, digital media, sculpture, and installation, Toivanen examines intensely personal, intimate experiences and memories to create work that speaks to a range of social, cultural, and political issues.
For the 2001 Charlotte Street Awards exhibition at the H&R Block Artspace at Kansas City Art Institute, Toivanen created an immersive, interactive installation comprising elements from her First Rite Games series, in which she was able, for the first time, to merge her interests in photography and sculpture into a cohesive, interactive installation. Photographic images of old, battered baby dolls inserted within reinvented games and toys provoked viewers to critically consider the feminine form and its role in the formation of female identity.
Toivanen’s work within gallery and public contexts has continued investigating selfimage, value systems, gender, and the enduring effects of prevailing societal and cultural pressures and beliefs on an individual. As an adult remembering her own childhood, and now as a mother observing her son’s development, Toivanen persistently challenges entrenched societal boundaries and expectations through her multifaceted work.
Safe (2005), a site-specific video and sound installation, captured the act of an infant (her son) nursing. Projected within an old walk-in safe, the video could be viewed only voyeuristically, from outside the closed gate. Simultaneously evoking notions of nurture, imprisonment, comfort, and unease, Safe also heightened one’s awareness of sociocultural biases regarding public versus private behavior.
The Wild Frontier, a recent series of digital photographs, indicates Toivanen’s shift into imagery stereotypically linked with boys. Evoking the influence of David Levinthal’s photographs as well as decorative relief sculpture, Toivanen’s shadowy silhouettes of toy cowboys and Indians emerging from ambiguous grounds are both alluring and menacing. By subversively using haunting images of dolls or toy soldiers, Toivanen attempts to debunk damaging sociocultural myths instilled into children, regardless of
their sex.
Several new series include themes related to the experience of reading stories, specifically Finnish fairy tales, to her son; gardening; and the absurdity of war. Revealing both beauty and darkness, attuned to her own life while jettisoning an autobiographical impetus, Toivanen’s work is emblematic of a new paradigm for creative women who navigate and commingle complex, seemingly irreconcilable facets of life—as mothers and artists—in courageous and meaningful ways.
—Heather Lustfeldt
