Pilvi Takala:
On Discomfort

On the museum’s 1st and 2nd floor we present the solo exhibition On Discomfort by the Finnish artist Pilvi Takala. The exhibition includes the multi-channel installation Close Watch presented at the Finnish Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2022, now showing for the first time in Denmark. 

Close Watch is based on Pilvi Takala’s experiences in the private security industry, where she worked under cover for 6 months as a security guard in one of Finland’s largest shopping centers. 

HOW WE BEHAVE IN PUBLIC

In her work, Pilvi Takala investigates our behavior in different types of public spaces: the mall, Euro Disney theme park, a dance hall, the Internet and various working environments at such diverse contexts as Securitas, Deloitte and a hip office community in London. 

In her works Takala appears as a kind of artistic ‘undercover agent’ wearing a disguise or an assumed identity and with equal care, curiosity and satire unravels our social manners and behavior in the roles we take up in both work and private life – as individuals and as citizens – and the perhaps not always completely clear boundary between these. 

The videos of her in action are often quite funny. In Real Snow White she tries to enter Euro Disneyland dressed as the cartoon character Snow White and in The Stroker from 2018 she pretends to be an employee of the fictional pioneering company ‘Personnel Touch’, which supplies touch in the workplace at ‘Second Home’, an office community for entrepreneurs in London. 

On Discomfort was originally conceived by Goldsmiths Centre for Contemporary Art, London, 2023.