Pride Week Interview with Elina Nissinen and Oskari Ruuska: University staff want feedback and have supported student initiatives
Helsinki Pride is celebrated from 28th of June to 4th of July 2021. In this series of interviews, four Uniarts Helsinki staff members and students reflect on the standing of sexual and gender minorities through their own experiences, art and more broadly through social debate. This time, we interview Elina Nissinen and Oskari Ruuska, students at the Academy of Fine Arts.
Someone interested in studying at Uniarts Helsinki contacts you and asks how our university relates to sexual and gender minorities. How do you reply?
Elina: Uniarts Helsinki is a big university, and there are sometimes large cultural differences between different academies and degree programs. The educational institution with its policies is a different matter than individuals and their experiences. It is worth asking about the experiences of different people and, above all, of those who are currently studying in a degree program that interests you. Oskari and I cannot represent the experiences of students at a general level.
Oskari: Students have really varied experiences of Uniarts. For example, the experiences of those that are part to gender minorities have not been very good, as I understand and have heard. In my experience, students find it difficult to identify and address harassment. University support is needed here. During my own studies, the discussion has become a little better. The problems and harassment experienced by minorities are talked about more openly than five years ago when I began my studies at the Academy of Fine Arts. Some practical steps have also been taken, such as the naming of additional harassment contact persons. University staff want feedback and have supported activities that students have initiated.
How can we shed more light on the situation and experiences of sexual and gender minorities at Uniarts?
Elina: Students have been proactively seeking ways of improving the situation around sexual and gender minorities at Uniarts. It would be important for Uniarts to provide knowledgeable, compulsory, and regular training for staff on equal treatment of LGBTQI+ people. For example, familiarization with up-to-date vocabulary and language use is important. The same, of course, applies to equality work against racism and ableism, i.e., discrimination on the grounds of disability, and to the prevention of discrimination within the university and in admission processes. It would also be important to add queer-feminist theory and diversity in general in the curriculum. For example, the teaching of art history is the repetition of the traditional story of a white, Western cisgender heterosexual male artist. We need histories told in different voices, including the perspectives of sexual and gender minorities.
Oskari: The Inclusivity Agenda was an important, student-driven project initiated by Jessie Bullivant, who was studying at Uniarts at the time. The initiative led to the establishment of an equality group. Eeti Piiroinen and Jonni Korhonen were the student representatives there. Together with Jessie, they for example prepared the rules for a Safer Space for the Academy of Fine Arts and a poster campaign, which is still displayed in the corridors of the Academy. At the Theatre Academy, an active student, Dasha Che, has facilitated meetings for transgender and non-binary students together with Professor Aune Kallinen. Dasha has been involved in a working group promoting inclusivity at Uniarts. We are grateful, among others, to these pioneers.
How easy is it for a member of a sexual minority to work in your own field of art today? Is non-discrimination self-evident already?
Elina: Discrimination is not over. Fortunately, there are self-organized communities in the field of visual arts that base their activities on intersectional values. In institutions, cultural change is usually a slower process. I believe that there is room for queer artists and perspectives, and that more room will be created in the future.
Oskari: There are different groups and bubbles within the visual arts where different things are valued. The minority status of artists usually affects the availability of grants and their activities in the field. Works by cisgender male artists traditionally dominate museum collections. Gender diversity is still not self-evident. For example, grant or residency application forms often have only two options for gender.
What kind of special meaning or role can your own art form have in answering different minority questions?
Oskari: In visual arts, we work with representation all the time, and that in itself allows for different expressions. We are used to considering representation issues. Many artists are involved in critical debate and themselves represent a minority, even if they do not directly address their minority position in their art. Being an artist is a public profession.
Elina: Contemporary art participates in critical discussion through art. Art not only reacts to the prevailing conditions, but also imagines and creates an alternative future and realities.
Why do we need pride events these days?
Elina: Pride is a monumental event that celebrates and defends the LGBTQI+ community and the history of the pride movement internationally. Pride is founded on a huge amount of life-threatening work for equality. It makes sexual and gender minorities visible and raises societal human rights issues. Pride is already so mainstream that every June, a significant number of influential institutions announce their support for pride values, i.e., equality. That support should be visible and felt throughout the year.
Oskari: That’s right. LGBTQI+ people are everywhere. I only have experience of pride events in bigger cities. However, pride events and minority communities are needed everywhere, I believe especially in small towns.
What frustrates you when you follow the public conversation about sexual and gender minorities?
Oskari: I am annoyed that even the introduction to the basic issues remains the responsibility of the minorities themselves. Institutions are very slow to learn and make use of basic information that is readily available. I am also saddened and frustrated by, for example, the development of the situation in Poland, Hungary and Russia and the strengthening of conservative values in Finland as well.
Elina: I agree, the international political regression and the slow progress in the mainstream debate are frustrating. Also, the so-called pink-wash and rainbow capitalism are annoying. It is empty bolstering of the image of companies and states, i.e., commercial and political rhetoric. Utilizing a rainbow flag must mean concrete action to promote equality.
How would you guide the younger you with the life experience you have today?
Oskari: I have considered my sexual identity a lot during my studies. One should not be harsh on oneself in how one has reacted to different roles in the past. People change and school changes in relation to these issues, even if it takes time.
Elina: Many people are thinking about similar questions to yours. There are many kinds of communities that you should bravely connect with. Today, finding support and communities is already easier, for example, through social media.
Text by: Päivi Brink