Paper short abstract

During a communal art happening, organised around a Finnish reception centre, I explored how artistic practices can intervene in polarised local contexts. Through children’s art and embodied co-presence, the event momentarily reconfigured relations, visibility, and possibilities for co-existence.

Paper long abstract

In this paper I explore how a communal art happening functioned as an ethnographic intervention in a context shaped by latent polarisation around a Finnish reception centre. Based on four months of ethnographic fieldwork in a central accommodation unit located in a socio-economically marginalised town, I focus on a participatory art event that I organised in collaboration with reception centre staff, local businesses, and municipal actors.

Initially I thought the event, which centered on children and families painting on the pavement surrounding the centre, to be a way to facilitate encounters between residents of the centre and families living in the surrounding neighborhood. Only later did it become clear to me that the site was marked by long-standing tensions related to anti-immigration discourse, safety concerns, and the symbolic positioning of asylum seekers within the town.

By foregrounding children’s artistic practices and everyday materialities, such as paint, bubbles, and shared food, the event made visible the reception centre, its residents, and their everyday lives. While participation from local families remained limited, reactions from passersby and subsequent engagements revealed shifts in affective atmospheres and possibilities for recognition. The continuation of painting activities with resident families further blurred the boundaries between research, participation, and care, opening spaces for ethnographic knowledge-making grounded in doing together rather than speaking.

I argue that art–anthropology entanglements can generate fragile but meaningful moments of co-existence in polarised settings. I also ponder critically the limits and unsustainability of creative and artistic interventions within these specific institutional contexts.