Family Matters: A Conversation with Emma Jääskeläinen / Sculpture Magazine

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Emma Jääskeläinen transforms classic stone sculpting materials and techniques into contemplative, cheeky, soft, and bulky (or “Gustonian”, as she herself describes) forms, that carry strong personal stories, memories and hope. From monumental scale to palm-size, and from hard materials, such as granite, marble and travertine, to metal casting and wool felting, Jääskeläinen looks for impulses that arise from within the material, as it reacts to her touch.

She works with stone in its own terms, focusing on its surface patterns, for example. Slowness, manual skill and the importance of touch are recurring themes in Jääskeläinen’s practice. Her idea for a piece of stone is always a proposal; the stone responds, guides, resists or demonstrates its willingness to collaborate. According to Jääskeläinen, she transfers the movements of her body into the form of the work. The pieces are often quite large, requiring her to climb on top of them. She lies down, sits and actively changes her posture as she works on the sculptures. The juxtaposition of opposites, such as hard and soft, runs through both the materials and forms. Soft wool is transformed through felting into something as hard as stone; the surface of stone is worked with repeated, almost meditative hand movements into a soft and living form.

Emma Jääskeläinen says she thinks of people who are important to her when she makes her sculptures, and the works are often portraits of a kind. The ideas and themes originate from the everyday, such as her loved ones, pop culture or a chewing gum stuck to a sculpture, expanding towards art historical framework, and fundamental, corporeal experiences such as motherhood, empathy and caring. Who are statues built of, and how is the human body represented in them, she asks. Analogously to the working process, which leaves traces on the surface of the sculpture, Jääskeläinen contemplates on the traces that she has left behind, her personal history and our relationship with the nature.