By Aino Kajaniemi
Aino Kajaniemi is an artist from Jyväskylä, Finland. Her bold and dramatic tapestries are often likened to sketching or a form of line etching with fibers. She graduated from the University of Art and Design in Helsinki, and her works have been shown in solo and collective shows throughout Europe. She was Finnish Artist of the Year in 2010.
PREFACE
Although Finland is renowned for woven textile traditions dating back centuries – including double weave and rya (knotted pile) – tapestry weaving in Finland has a much shorter history. It was not until the 1900 World Exhibition in Paris that tapestry weaving began to emerge in Finland. Research confirms that the only older historical tapestries found in Finland were actually Belgian and are now held in Turku Castle.
The 1900 World Exhibition marked an important breakthrough for Finnish textiles. Although Finland was still a part of Russia, Finnish weavers had their own pavilion, designed by noted architect Eliel Saarinen. The Finnish Pavilion provided important recognition to a country that dreamed of independence; that came in 1918. Akseli Gallen-Kallela, a famous Finnish painter, designed the textiles for the Finnish Pavilion. In his travels around Europe, he saw for the first time the tapestries of France and Italy. He returned to Finland and sent weavers from Friends of Finnish Handicraft to Norway to study tapestry weaving. In 1900, the first known Finnish tapestry was woven, in Art Nouveau style, ”Chickens from the Forest and Pine Saplings.”
“Chickens from Forest and Pine Saplings (detail),” 1900.
IMPRESSIONS IN TAPESTRY
Tapestry weaving has never been as popular in Finland as have other forms of weaving. I am part of a group of tapestry- focused artists that includes Inka Kivalo, Ariadna Donner, and Soili Hovila. We had a group exhibition at the Craft Museum of Finland in Jyväskylä in 2020, and will have an additional exhibition in Rovaniemi Art Museum in 2024.
I have woven tapestries for forty years. I attended weaving school for two years, and the experience provided a good career basis. As the saying goes, after you master the technique, you can forget it. I then studied at the University of Art and Design in Helsinki and graduated as a textile artist in 1983. At the time of my final examination, I showed my sketches to my teacher, and she said, “The only way to weave these is with tapestry.” She decided that the warp should be thin, strong, twisted linen at six ends per centimeter. When the loom was ready, she left me alone. I had to create the weaving myself.
I learned there are many rules in traditional tapestry weaving; you have to hide the warp, it is not allowed to wrap different threads together, or to mix threads. The weaving line must be horizontal. I heard all of this information later; nobody really taught me how to weave tapestry, and I am happy about that. My weaving is not traditional tapestry weaving. I think it can be described as impressionism in tapestry. I don’t know or care about rules but want to weave freely and quickly.
Aino Kajaniemi, “Growing,” 2019.
At the beginning of my career, I thought that an artist must learn to handle strong feelings and embrace the whole world in her artwork. I began to work as a full-time artist in 1990. My parents died and my second child was born that same year; my start as an artist happened when my life was affected by extreme opposites: birth and death. I had moved to my childhood home to take care of my parents and my family stayed there after they died.
My textiles are my way of thinking. I want to transform my thoughts and ideas into something concrete, so that I can understand them. In all art, you need your senses— sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch. The sense of touch has special richness in textile art. It is said that the sense of touch is the most emotional sense for humans. Textiles bring up memories through touch, through our skin.
When I was young, I had a lot of feelings inside me. I spent all of my energy working out my emotional life in my tapestries. The world of black and white seemed simpler, I didn’t want to add more emotion through colors. As I grew older, I could concentrate more on life outside me. Gradually, color appeared in my tapestries. When I use strong colors, I don’t want to tell a story in the work; color in itself includes messages. I feel that colors need a bigger space because they are full of energy. Adding color has brought more joy and light to my tapestries and to my life.
Aino Kajaniemi, “I’ll Take It,” 2022.
Weaving liturgical textiles also taught me to use colors. In the Evangelic Lutheran Church, we use five or six colors in church textiles: white, red, green, violet, black, and sometimes blue. I have woven liturgical textiles for seven churches and two chapels. Six of those were done with my tapestry technique.
It is good that we have many time concepts; we have the past and future, we have seconds, minutes, hours, days, and years. When I weave, I have to be present, but at same time I can be on another level—I can look back or I can plan new works. If your life is sad at that moment, you can move your mind to the future or the past. If your future or past scares you, it is better to concentrate on the present.
I work alone for many hours per day and yet a single second can be very important. Weaving is
a form of discovery; even though I have practiced this technique almost 40 years, I’m not in complete control of the threads. Chance has its role—for example when I weave a face, threads may position themselves so that a smile turns into sorrow, or anger becomes joy. One thread can change happiness to sadness.
Aino Kajaniemi, “Understanding,” 2019.
I often use textiles as symbols, such as laces, pleats, dresses, collars, socks, shoes, gloves, belt, hats, or scarves. All of these are personal, intimate items that evoke common memories. People see what they want to see in my tapestries. Once I spoke at an exhibition and said that I don’t handle erotica in my tapestries. That evening a visitor, a man, told me that my works are full of erotica!
I create finished sketches for all of my textiles before I begin to weave. I like to draw, and I like to weave. Weaving is about making decisions. How thick or thin should the threads be? Do I use single-color threads, or combine them to form different tones? Do I want the surface to be shiny or rough? Should I create effects using thicker materials? Do I want the warp threads to be packed so that the fabric is dense, or loose so that the texture of the tapestry stands out, and the fabric become almost transparent?
Nowadays I find all of my weft threads at flea markets, resulting in surprising tones and materials that appear in my color palette. I like variable surfaces and use them as a part of the story of a work. I like rough and smooth materials for the disagreement and discussion between them. I choose materials, colors, and tones as I weave.
Aino Kajaniemi. “Confidence,” 2014.
I have used linen, cotton, hemp, jute, sisal, nettle, viscose, acrylic, silk, wool, bamboo, bast, paper yarn and paper strip, horsehair and human hair, feathers, fishing line, metal wire, plastic strip and yarn, twig from a tree, birch bark, lurex, gold thread, and triacetate strips.
Flax is my favorite material: heckled flax in many thicknesses, tow flax, hand spun flax, and even unspun flax fiber. To me, silk represents luxury and the exotic, and wool suggests something homey.
When I want to add very thick material to a tapestry, I weave with ground weft for two or three passes and then pick every third warp thread from the open shed to insert the thick thread. In effect, the yarn is tied with one thread up and five threads under in one centimeter, so that it is tied down but doesn’t push the warp threads apart.
Because I use an upright loom and not a frame, I use treadles to avoid having to pick up leashes. This practice frees me to concentrate upon what matters—being expressive and the choices it requires. Sometimes I feel as if I am a part of my loom. The connection occurs in many ways. My feet treadle, my eyes watch, and my brain decides as my hands move through the threads.
Aino Kajaniemi. “Presence,” 2019.
I use butterflies or long thread pieces for weaving, and beat in the weft with an ordinary fork. During a big solo exhibition in 2015, my fork suddenly broke in two pieces. That exhibition was too much for it! I went to our kitchen and found another fork.
In my childhood family, there were five girls, and three of us are artists. One is a painter, the other is a photographer, and I am a textile artist. We have had many exhibitions together. Another lovely family experience has been working with my daughter; we have had six exhibitions together!
I am happy that I have found weaving as my life’s work. No other technique contains such rich history and is recognizable all over the world.