Following a callin April by the Finnish Cultural Institute for the Benelux inviting visual and community artists to submit proposals for an artwork or project on the theme of homelessness, the winner has now been announced.

The invitation formed part of the Mobile Home 2017 project, affiliated with the official Suomi Finland 100 celebrations commemorating Finland’s centenary of independence, with project partners comprising leading arts institutions in Belgium, the Netherlands and Finland. The Mobile Home(LESS) competition forms part of the Mobile Home 2017 project, run by Finnish cultural and academic institutions in Paris, Berlin and London, that marks Finland’s 100 years of independence and explores the meaning of home. Mobile Home 2017 considers the home as a physical, mental and symbolic space and a socio-cultural concept.

Along with ArtHelsinki (Finland), the BOZAR Centre for Fine Arts (Belgium), Castrum Peregrini (Netherlands), Frame Visual Art Finland (Finland) and Helsinki Festival (Finland), the Finnish Cultural Institute for the Benelux issued an open call to visual and community artists to submit proposals for a new artwork or project on the theme of homelessness.

Out of 53 strong artistic proposals, the winning entry was chosen by the Jury is sculptor Anssi Pulkkinen’s project Street View (Reassembled) I-III to be the commissioned and was awarded funding worth €10,000. It will be displayed in Finland and the Benelux region in 2017. The work of Anssi Pulkkinen takes as its starting point the ruins of houses destroyed by the bombings that took place in recent months in Syria. The installation inspired by these ruined houses creates a roaming streetscape aspiring to invest urban areas like the caravans of travelers.

In addition, three further entries were recognised with prizes each worth €700 by ArtHelsinki: Riikka Kuoppala and Thomas Martin of the Dreams Street, Sonya Lindfors for Unknown Landscapes and Malina Suliman for Exploring Mental Homelessness of Afghan Refugees in the Netherlands.