> Artist known as Jani Leinonen

Artist known as Jani Leinonen

Jani Leinonen was born in Hyvinkää, Finland in 1978. He graduated from Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki in 2002.

Leinonen has had enough of a world where, recycling Coke cans, giving a couple of euros for charity or buying a Fazer chocolate bar where 5 cents goes to third world starving children is enough to make us feel good. He has had enough of a world where real alternatives are impossible to imagine. Why is it so easy for us to imagine the end of the world, an asteroid destroying all life on earth, but we cannot imagine the end of capitalism?

Why do they tell us it is possible to rent a private spaceship and fly to the moon but it is impossible to raise taxes by little bit for the rich? Why do they tell us genetic engineering makes us immortal but it´s impossible to demand ethical investing of our own pensions and savings?  There is something fundamentally wrong in the world where we are offered immortality and moon flights but we cannot guarantee everybody their basic human rights ? because it might damage our economy.

Art is a lie that reveals the truth. And the truth is that we are allowed to think about alternatives. Conflicts keep spreading, social and economical differences keep widening, and our ecosystem is on the verge of breakdown. If the taboo is broken, we do not live in the best possible world. So, we know what we do not want. But what do we want? What social organization can replace capitalism?

Jani Leinonen knows that the same way he is offered coffee without caffeine, beer without alcohol, ice cream without fat, they will try to make our protest into a harmless, moral protest. A decaffienated protest. That is why we have to promise to ourselves that we will not someday just go home and then we will meet once a year, drinking beer, and nostalgically remembering? We were so young. What a nice time we had. Promise.