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Is there space for empathy?
Friday 21st May 2021 – Sunday 8th August 2021 , 10:00am to 5:00pm
The Nunnery Gallery is proud to present the first UK solo exhibition by the Finnish artist Enni-Kukka Tuomala. Tuomala has a vision to transform empathy from an individual feeling to a collective and radical power.
In this exhibition, Tuomala examines what empathy means in 2021, in a post-Brexit, post-Covid, post-colonial Britain. She looks at what role empathy can play in helping us re-enter public life and re-discover physical closeness with each other once again. Her installation makes empathy – an often abstract and intangible feeling – into a physical and tangible form we can see, feel and enter. Tuomala will ask us to consider:
Is there space left for empathy?
Can we re-learn to be physically close?
What lives in the invisible spaces between us?
Where is the line between public + private space now?
How could we practice being together?
What will it take to make us feel safe with each other again?
For years Tuomala has been exploring the spaces between people: investigating the public, social, personal and intimate distances between us and how they influence our abilities to meaningfully connect with one another. In trying to understand why the unoccupied space between us is primarily defined as “negative space” through the absence of physical entities – as oppose to “positive space”, defined through the existence of emotional entities – Tuomala hopes to reframe how we occupy and share space.
Exhibition Events:
Empathy Workshop – Sat 12 June, 1.30-3pm, FREE
First Thursday Late Opening – Thu 1 July, 4-8pm, FREE
First Thursday Late Opening – Thu 5 August, 4-8pm, FREE
Bow Skills Empathy Exchange – Thurs 23 Sep, 5.30-7pm, FREE
Open Day at Empathy HQ – Sat 25 Sep, 11am-5pm, FREE
Empathy Prints
Enni Kukka-Tuomala, the artist behind the Nunnery Gallery’s ‘Is there space for empathy?’ exhibition, has created two unique typographic prints available for purchase. Both prints feature the phrase “Be radically empathic” – the slogan of Tuomala’s Campaign for Empathy, the world’s first community-centred campaign to promote empathy through art and design.
At £100 each, the prints come unframed as standard and are a limited-edition run of 100, with a digital authentication label on the reverse featuring the edition number and the artist’s signature.
The artwork is printed on Awagami Washi Bamboo 170gsm paper. Dense yet wonderfully soft, this paper is 100% ecological with notable benefits over cotton-based papers. Crafted from natural fibres and pure mountain water, it is handmade for beautiful print output and longevity.
You can view and purchase the prints in-person in the Nunnery Gallery. Please email nunnery@bowarts.com for enquiries.
Please note that all print orders will be shipped after 15th August, once the exhibition closes.
About Enni-Kukka Tuomala
Enni-Kukka Tuomala is a Finnish Empathy Artist and Designer based in London. Her vision is to transform empathy from an individual feeling to a collective and radical power for positive social change through public interventions, installations, experiences, processes and tools.
Having created artworks and led projects around the world from London and Tokyo, to New York and Helsinki, Tuomala’s collaborative and research-based practice builds on understanding and investigating the delicate relationships between empathy, culture, space and systems. Her work aims to break taboos and challenge social, cultural and behavioural norms in order to remove barriers to difficult conversations and bridge the growing divides in our society, whether between humans, or humans and other species. She has worked with the Finnish Parliament since 2018 to bring empathy into politics, collaborating with six Members of Parliament to create Empatia Ele; a collection of empathy tools for politics. Tuomala has also created empathy commissions for the likes of the BBC, Greater London Authority, London Borough of Newham, Imperial College London, Bath University, LIFT and Virgin, including challenging 50 global Virgin CEOs to a series of empathy exercises as a part of the Embodying Empathy installation and launching the Campaign for Empathy, the world’s first community-centered campaign to promote empathy through art and design.
A graduate of the Royal College of Art, Tuomala recently installed her first permanent public artwork in London, and is currently the Designer in Residence 2020-21 at the Design Museum, London, and the Open House Artist in Residence 2020-21 at Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge.
www.ennikukka.com | Twitter: @ennikukka | Instagram: @akin.kollektiv #IsThereSpaceForEmpathy
Access Information
Nunnery Gallery has step-free access throughout from street level which includes an accessible toilet and is service animal friendly. This venue does not have a hearing loop system.
Accessible parking is not available on-site but blue badge parking can be found 500m away on Fairfield Road.
If you have any questions regarding accessibility at this venue or event, would like to make us aware of any access requirements that you have in advance of visiting, or would like this information in an alternate format including Easy Read, please email nunnery@bowarts.com or call 020 8980 7774 (Ext. 3)
Travel Information
Opening hours: Tue-Sun, 10am-4pm
Address: Nunnery Gallery, 181 Bow Road, London, E3 2SJ
Nearest station(s): Bow Road (District and Hammersmith and City lines) is a 6-minute walk away, and Bow Church (DLR) is a 3-minute walk away.
Bus:205, 25, 425, A8, D8, 108, 276, 488 and 8 all service the surrounding area.
Bike: Bicycle parking is located at Bow Church Station. The nearest Santander Cycles docking station is at Bow Church Station.
