Johanna Ehrnrooth prize awarded to visual artist Olli Valkola
Olli Valkola is participating in the 2026 Kuvan Kevät master’s degree exhibition with his video work Saari / Island, 1732–2026, which portrays his family’s home landscape as it gradually becomes deserted.
The Johanna Ehrnrooth prize, awarded by the University of the Arts Helsinki Foundation, aims to help young visual artists’ transition from studies to a professional, international career. The €10,000 prize is awarded every year to an artist selected from participants in the Kuvan Kevät master’s degree show.
Olli Valkola’s video installation depicts an island in lake Pielinen in North Karelia. The island was once widely inhabited, but is now becoming deserted, with only 70 residents remaining. Valkola’s family owned a farm on the island from 1732 to 2026. The video installation is a narrative of different kinds of rural landscapes: internalized ones rooted in family, history, home, and identity, as well as external landscapes inhabited by species other than humans. Valkola has also utilized his own bespoke technology in the work.
Leevi Haapala, Dean of the Academy of Fine Arts and Chair of the prize selection committee, describes Valkola’s work as follows:
“The work has a sense of magical realism, evident in its choice of color palette, layered narratives, and the breathtaking sense of anticipation it evokes. It seems to suggest that if you take the time to look and truly pay attention, something deeply special and unique may subtly reveal itself. However, the work is not merely quiet contemplation. There is drama in its use of the light and darkness of the visual noise.”
The prize was presented to Valkola by Heikki Lehtonen, Chair of the Board of the University of the Arts Helsinki Foundation, on May 13 at the opening of the Kuvan Kevät exhibition. In addition to Haapala, the selection panel included Professor Hanna Johansson, Kuvan Kevät curator Suzanne Mooney, and researcher Nina Liebenberg.
The Johanna Ehrnrooth Prize is awarded annually to an artist participating in the Kuvan Kevät exhibition of the Academy of Fine Arts, and it was awarded for the third time this year. The prize is funded by a memorial fund established in honor of visual artist Johanna Ehrnrooth and managed by the University of the Arts Helsinki Foundation.