Feature Image: Piece of Heaven by Fibrespace Incorporated, regional South Australia, textiles, yarn, beads, 2 x 2 m, 2017. Photography by Georgie Sharp.

Piece of Heaven is a collaborative textile installation through which groups of artists visualise and discuss their experiences of happiness. Piece of Heaven, ‘pala taivasta’, describes the feeling when everything is good, in harmony, as good as it gets. For someone a piece of heaven is a moment of gardening on Sunday morning, to another it is a daughter’s smiley eyes when picking her up from the kindergarten.

My Piece of Heaven from the Murmansk Arctic State University’s artist community, textiles and yarn, 2 x 2 m, 2017.

This collaborative installation was created by peripheral artist communities worldwide. The final global artist collaboration of 2017, facilitated by Satu Miettinen from the Margin to Margin project, consisted of seven collaborative textiles, measuring an impressive two by two meters. An artist community from the Murmansk State University in Russia, ArtsUp artist collective from Streaky Bay in South Australia, Fibrespace Incorporated from regional South Australia, two artist communities from the University of Namibia, two artist groups from the University of Lapland, and one artist group from China produced works for the installation.

The groups created textiles that narrate their happiness. The installation connects the visualisations of all the participants’ Piece of Heaven. In addition to the textiles, the ideas, discussions, memories, dreams and experiences that constituted the participants’ happiness expressed in their ‘piece(s) of heaven’. The works connect the voices of all the participants, which will be audible in this multimedia installation that will be exhibited during January 2018 at the Gallery of the Faculty of Art and Design in Rovaniemi, and at the Desert Fringe Festival during February and March 2018 at the Port Augusta Cultural Centre – Yarta Purtli in South Australia.

Voice: Liz McTaggart, Streaky Bay South Australia.

Text by Satu Miettinen

Photography by Georgie Sharp and Melanie Sarantou.