AYY’s renewed art collection on display at the Museum of Student Life – including a work created with a tattooing technique

The Museum of Student Life’s changing exhibition space showcases AYY’s art acquisitions from 2024 and interesting highlights from the student union’s art collection over the years. The recent additions to the collection include four works created by students: Hesen parkkis (Justiina Mäenpää 2023), Memory foam II (Raisa Mäkinen 2023), One Last Tree (Suthasinee Naktnasukanjn 2023), and Exodermis (Kaisa Koisti 2021). The open call for artwork on the theme ‘Näkökulma – Perspective’ was held in November 2024. 

One of the selected artists is Kaisa Koisti, a multidisciplinary artist and visual communication design student at Aalto ARTS. Koisti’s work Exodermis (2021) is a wearable artefact, a relic of the pandemic era: a tattooed face mask made of faux skin, tattoo ink, and metal elements, along with a notebook item describing a process diary to be browsed in AYY’s collection. This is the first artwork in the student union’s art collection created using a tattooing technique. 

The work was originally created for Type and Written Language course in spring 2021, when on-campus studies transitioned to remote teaching due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Koisti describes her work as experimental, sculptural, and aesthetically sensual.  

‘Exodermis gives form to the boredom and emptiness caused by a global crisis. The work also represents a gap: in the context of cultural history, tattoos have carried a stigma, and covering part of your face has been associated with power dynamics’, Koisti explains. 

In Koisti’s opinion, it is significant that even in the midst of crises, artists remain a vital part of society. It is important to be able to create art during times of crisis. 

‘I hope my work offers people a moment to pause in time. I also hope that the visibility gained through AYY will increase appreciation for multidisciplinary art and its creators’, says Koisti. 

For the first time, the art collection exhibition allows the public to take a close look at Koisti’s artefact. Since its publication in 2021, the artwork has only been displayed on an online platform as part of a portfolio archive compiled under the course page. Koisti is delighted that AYY’s art collection increases the representation of the arts and media, as well as the artistic expertise constantly being created at Aalto University. 

The Museum of Student Life is open on Sundays at 14.00–16.00, located on the ground floor of the building at Jämeräntaival 3. In addition to the changing exhibition, the museum displays extracts from the history and present of the student cultures of Aalto University and its predecessors. No admission fee. The open call for the art collection will take place next in late 2025. 

Kaisa Koisti’s art is more widely displayed in her private exhibition on 20–30 Mar 2025 at Kalleria at Kaarlenkatu 10. Skinned & Preserved exhibition’s opening hours can be found on Kalleria’s website.