Juhani Tuominen: Waiting Room

Juhani Tuominen, 1999.

The State Art Deposit Collection

Acrylic on canvas and wood. 140 x 510 x 10 cm.

Painter and Professor Emeritus of Visual Arts Juhani Tuominen was born in 1949 and studied in the School of the Fine Arts Academy of Finland from 1970 to 1974. Tuominen spent a considerable part of his career at the University of Lapland’s Faculty of Art and Design where he worked as a professor of visual arts.

Tuominen’s work Waiting room was commissioned by the State Art Commission to be placed in the lobby of the Rovaniemi Court of Appeal building. In terms of the measures of the work and its individual parts, the work has been created to be placed in that space, and particular attention has been paid to its dialogue with the surrounding architecture.

The painting evokes the shape of a mausoleum in which coffins – cenotaphs – are silently waiting for the final judgment day when those whose names are inscribed on them will stand trial for the way they have lived. Repetition is a continuum of life and human aspirations generation after generation. The waiting is silent and calm. The lobby of the Rovaniemi Court of Appeal is also a waiting room.

The purpose of the painting is to bring calmness to the space without accusing or singling out anyone. The painting is also connected to the broader thematic of Juhani Tuominen’s artistic oeuvre, which originates in the characteristic tombs, or mausoleums (türbe), of the Ottoman Empire.

The work was removed from its original location due to renovation of the Rovaniemi Court of Appeal building and placed in the University of Lapland’s spaces in 2021.