Finnish Artist Heidi Hänninen Paints the Walls of Sarkandaugava

For a couple of weeks now, residents of Sarkandaugava, drivers and pedestrians on Tvaika Street have been able to watch drawings taking shape on the wall of the Riga Centre of Psychiatry and Narcology (Tvaika iela 2). More precisely - they are words, letters, syllables, illustrated by black-and-white images: flowers, birds, faces.

As the artist herself told us, her central idea is to highlight words familiar across many of the world's languages with the suffix "-ism" - poetism, altruism, and others. Heidi has taken in the neighbourhood's multilingual environment, which is why both Latin and Cyrillic script appear in the works. Heidi's first drawing is dedicated to a Sarkandaugava resident - the poet Aivars Neibarts (05.12.1939–11.02.2001, known as Ņurbulis), who once lived on Āžu Street.

Heidi laments that unfortunately the work is not going as smoothly as hoped, as someone periodically calls the police and every time she has to explain that she is not engaged in the unauthorised marking of walls, but is working within the art project "Riga Poetry Map." She has also coordinated her activities with both the Riga Centre of Psychiatry and Narcology and the Sarkandaugava Development Association.

With this article we wish to encourage the artist and promote understanding among those around her. And, of course, we look forward impatiently to being able to view all the works together. In total, four paintings are planned. Each work can be seen both as an independent message and, thanks to the shared suffix "-isms", forms a line of poetry. Such artworks are also known as Street poetry.

For reference:

"Riga Poetry Map" is a long-term project by "Orbita," launched in the spring of 2012 and concluding in November 2014. The Poetry Map brings together poets and young media artists from Latvia and other European countries. Each of them chooses one of Riga's neighbourhoods and, spending four weeks in residence and engaging with local residents and other creative people, documents the surrounding environment, the community living there, its customs, and so on - in poetry or another art form. The result is interdisciplinary artworks connected to the surrounding environment, which are intended to be presented both in the respective neighbourhood where the residents stayed and elsewhere in Riga. Source: http://www.lsm.lv/lv/kultura/somu-maksliniece-piedalas-riigas-dzejas-kartes-veidoshana.a60896/

Artist Heidi Hänninen's website - http://heidihanninen.com

Some works already completed: