The 2024 Aïda Alliman Grant Awarded to Noora Kaunisto

Noora Kaunisto on receiving the grant and her art:
She shares that the grant will allow her to focus on preparing for her exhibition at tm•gallery in summer 2025:

“I’ve had an intense exhibition schedule over the past couple of years. Thanks to this grant, I can now take time to focus and work calmly toward my summer 2025 exhibition at tm•gallery. After some tough years, I’m really happy and grateful for this opportunity to dedicate myself to artistic work!

My practice is deeply rooted in drawing, which is an important form of thinking for me. My shelves and cabinets are overflowing with sketchbooks filled with thoughts, ideas, and notes in a fairly chaotic state. Each book develops its own kind of visual logic, which I find exciting.”

Kaunisto finds inspiration in the atmosphere of Ostrobothnia, among other things:

“My work often starts with hazy moods or strange experiences of grief. I often find myself thinking, while painting, about that strange atmosphere of 1990s Ostrobothnia. I frequently reflect on the overlapping exposures of times and places. Time behaves oddly within a painting, and viewers can slip between different times and locations in peculiar ways.

When I paint, I consider complex chains of seeing in front of which the viewer may feel like a strange outsider. For me, painting is a celebration of the world, of my own sentient animality, and of odd painterly matter. Right now, I’m fascinated by the aesthetic connections between pattern designs and painting, certain kinds of repetition, and comic-like colors or elements combined with slightly unsettling visual storytelling.”

Artist: Noora Kaunisto

• Born 1984, Halsua, Central Ostrobothnia
• Lives in Helsinki
• Graduated from the Free Art School in 2020
• Currently completing studies at the Academy of Fine Arts, Helsinki (graduating spring 2024)

The Aïda Alliman Grant is awarded annually by the Vermeeriana Foundation to an artist aged 30–50 who has graduated from the Free Art School. The grant is CHF 20,000 and may be used for artistic work, exhibition production, or personal living expenses.

Past recipients:
Erik Creutziger (2023), Camilla Mihkelsoo (2022), Inkeri Halme (2021), Enoch Bergsten (2020), Pauli Tapola (2019), Verna Joki (2018), Susanna Vuorio (2017), Aino Salmi (2016)