STYLE

When Everything Changes, Style Endures

​

Marita speaks a great deal about change, of how everything must be renewed and replaced. Not only in life but also in art. On many occasions, a major change has taken place in a year ending in 9. Accordingly, the next one would be 2019.

‘The decades have been different. At intervals of ten years, I change my modus operandi as an artist, my life as a person and my way of thinking – even my appearance changes’, she says.

But something endures. Her closest friends, living around the world, have remained the same for decades. This book contains excerpts from letters written by Marita to her Dutch friend Anna Trap during a period of over 30 years. Also her art, while changing, remains recognisable. And when you meet her after more than years, it is as if you’d last met the day before. ‘Style endures’, she points out.

That style has great deal of content, even transformations from one character to another. At the time of her Maire multimedia she appeared as a black and white Maire, the colourful Bitch was associated with Ambitious Bitch, and then she turned into a dramatic Tarot Witch. Theatrical work helps in creating the characters. It has also become a carefully considered way to gain public exposure.

‘When I was young, I worked for seven years as a journalist and photographer to fund my work in art and travel. I got to know the media from two sides at the same time. I was a shy arthritic individual and I practised the control of a public image by gradually constructing characters that transformed along with my work’.

‘The characters associated with the works have their own costumes, hairstyles and personalities. Maire, Bitch and Witch were so successful that I began to be called with those names. They have to do with the content of the works: I have been the character of which the work tells. I have public exposure, because my work is public.’

Marita points out that transforming into different characters is common in the music business, for example. ‘I have borrowed normal practices from other fields into my art. Authors do the same, for example [Finnish authors] Rosa Liksom and Sofi Oksanen. A public role figure is a useful tool that is fun. The privacy behind it remains private.’

Nor are visual artists free of different roles and styles, although Marita’s characters are exceptional.’

‘It was a point of honour for left-wing artists to wear the same worn woollen sweater all year round. And actors liked to wear jogging suits when Jouko Turkka was head of the Finnish Theatre Academy. I feel that you have to respect the audience when you’re at the professional level. If you’re invited to the president’s Independence Day reception you don’t wear rags – and it’s not enough even to dress according to basic standards for an artist representing their country and their culture. I’ve always felt that I represent my country, my people, my gender and my profession, and I respect all of them.’

‘I learnt from my mother that even if you’re poor you don’t have to be miserable. It’s polite and fun to dress well, or at least personally – and what else could an aesthete do?’

Marita recalls how she drew gazes at the time of Ambitious Bitch by combining football shoes with an evening gown.

‘Self-deprecating humour is an integral feature of my characters.’

Style also endures in Marita’s home, although that home has often moved from one place to another. ‘I created my own style and habits already in my childhood. I have furniture that has always been there. It can at times be in storage. I have, for example, had the black tables in the portraits in Golden Age since the age of 15. They’ve only been painted several times.’

She says that the style has been influenced by her childhood in Porkkala west of Helsinki in Russian-Finnish-Finland Swedish culture.

‘Even when I was young, I always had strange objects and colours and when I had to choose between having a bathroom and wood-heated stove, I chose the stove.’ A personal style cannot be defined, for example, according to any given orientation of style.

‘All objects are different and there is a story to all of them. I pick things from different historical eras that fascinate me and suit my style. I use colours that are strong by Finnish standards and gold, a material that is rare here.’ ‘Although I am a Scandinavian who has had a modern art education, the Scandinavian style of interior decoration hardly appeals to me.’

’In her childhood, Marita had to spend a lot of time in hospitals, and she associates Artek and Marimekko with them. On one occasion, she would have been given a chair for a piece of work that she did for Artek, but she did not want it.  ‘I am interested in contemporary design, but I’m highly selective’, she notes.  ‘My friends know when to say, “Hey, that’s a lamp for Marita”. Although my style is hard to explain it is recognisable.’

Her recognisable style can also be seen in the Golden Age exhibition, which literally contains a great deal of gold along with strong but harmonious colours. The Gösta exhibition hall was transformed into a space rich in atmosphere in which light and materials are important. The exhibition clearly shows that Marita does not just make individual works. Instead, everything forms a whole.

‘I greatly enjoy visual and graphic design as part of my work. Few contemporary artists design everything related to their life f rom webpages to books and f rom costumes to interiors’, she points out.

‘I carefully plan the vocabulary of form of all my works down to their fonts and colour scales. I then construct my character, which presents the work as completed. Occasionally, I also cooperate with a designer that I appreciate; I made the Golden Age costume together with Teemu Muurimäki. I have provided image and brand design for several companies, institutions and artists. Perhaps the best-known of these is musician Kimmo Pohjonen with his accordion skirt.’