Graphica Creativa 2022

16th International Print Triennial
Graphica Creativa 2022 – Untold Artists' Stories
Jyväskylä Art Museum 22 October 2022–29 January 2023

Graphica Creativa Print Triennial brings female Street Art pioneer and contemporary printmaking to Jyväskylä. The exhibition features works by the internationally renowned Swoon (Caledonia Curry, b. 1977) and works by 90 artists from around the world.

Caledonia Curry, known as Swoon, is known around the world for her groundbreaking public artwork. Swoon’s work is shown in Finland for the first time, as part of the Graphica Creative triennial exhibition.

Swoon (b.1977) began installing street art towards the end of the 1990’s while she was studying in New York. She drew and printed on recuperated, excess paper, pasting them on walls around the city. These delicate and intimate pieces depicting people the artist meet on the streets, attracted widespread attention. The now internationally renowned artist’s work includes installations, animations and community art projects. 

For Swoon, art is a central tool for empowerment and creating social change. She has produced several projects with different communities in the United States and elsewhere around the world. In her work, the artist employs elements from her own life experience, and has dealt with subjects such as growing up as the child of opioid dependent parents. Educated as a printmaker, Swoon has also developed new approaches to printmaking.  

The installation shown at the Jyväskylä Art Museum, shows large scale portraits, typical of her production, along with pieces from the Eidophones series and an animation film. The central piece of this installation is Cicada, Swoon’s first extensive stop motion animation. This piece is about birth, growth and change, and is based on the artist’s own biographical story.  The main character of the story, the  "Tarantula-mother" – is an allegory to the artist’s memory of childhood, and the mythological figures express processes of survival and spiritual growth. 

Untold Artists’ Stories brings artists biographical stories, breakthroughs and inspirational moments to the foreground

The 2022 Graphica Creativa shows a broad selection of international printed artworks themed in the artists’ stories. An international open call for submissions was organised in the autumn of 2021, which called for pieces that were particularly significant to the artist’s themselves. This exhibition presents over 90 prints from different parts of the world along with their background stories. 

Personal and intimate stories related to life and family along with societal events and themes which were particularly significant to the artist, standout in this exhibition. The installation of this exhibition is divided into two entities, in accordance with the main thematics.

Difficulties experienced by the artists, familial changes and illnesses but also strange coincidences, inspirational moments and technical realisations all affected why a particular artwork became important to the artist. An artist’s work was also influenced by natural disasters, fears for the future and societal grievances. Collectively the artwork shares in the universality of the stories told, and touches all of us regardless of where we are from. 

The artists stories are collected into a text which can be read in the exhibition space. The viewers can also become acquainted with the stories on-line at graphicacreativa.fi. 

One of the artists presented in this triennial is Iranian printmaker Mehdi Darvishi, who was artist in residency at the Ratamo Printmaking Centre in the spring of 2022.  Currently living and teaching in the United States,  Darvishi uses mezzotint techniques to express the momentary nature of life in his prints. 

Graphica Creativa is an international print exhibition organised every three years in Jyväskylä since 1975, and at the Jyväskylä Art Museum since 1998. Graphica Creativa is the oldest exhibition of international printmaking organised in the Northern countries and the only reoccurring exhibition of international printmaking in Finland.