As time goes by

Brownish-gray, strip-like pieces of plywood from a work of art.

Earth’s Dirts

15.10.2025

A summer landscape with several roundish-shaped pieces of artwork in the foreground. Taller vegetation and trees in the background.

Nesting

15.10.2025

As time goes by

> Oulun Taitelijaseura : 15.10.2025

Close-up in the gallery, sand flows in a thin stream from above, gathering in a pile on the floor.

Anna Tahkola

Location → Toppilansaari beach

The piece “As time goes by” built on the beach of Toppilansaari is a three-part participative sculpture installation.

The work consists of two non-turnable hourglass sculptures and one organically shaped “lump” that can be placed on the ground and can also be sat on. The materials of the work are concrete, ceramics, steel and sand.

The hourglass sculptures are designed to engage the viewers. With a small shovel attached to the art piece, people can add sand to the hourglass, which is open from above. Sand in the sculpture, like an hourglass, materializes time. Time passes, sand flows, spreads and accumulates around the sculpture, depicting the past. Placed on the sandy beach, the hourglass sculpture transforms the sand of the entire beach into an image of Earth’s time.

Image gallery

A large funnel in the gallery space, from which sand pours out in a heap onto the floor. — Anna Tahkola: concept images of the art piece.

Artist:
Anna Tahkola

Anna Tahkola (b. 1983 Kempele) is a visual artist living in Turku. She works multidisciplinary with drawing, painting, sculpture installations, performance art and writing. Physicality and affective thinking are at the center of Tahkola’s artistic work.

In her works, Tahkola gives material forms to the slow organic change processes that can be observed in nature. Tahkola is fascinated by layers of time and the themes of flow and formation. In Tahkola’s artworks and installations, different observations collide, mix and overlap into a fragmentary whole. With her art, Tahkola creates a place for presence and wonder and the bodily experience of art.

Tahkola graduated from Aalto University’s Master of Fine Arts program in 2015. Her latest projects include solo exhibitions at the Salo Art Museum, Galleria Mältinranta, Studio Mustanapa and Gallery Huudo 2025, Gallery Ars Libera 2024 and B-gallery in Turku in 2022. Her works have been exhibited in joint exhibitions at the Kuopio Art Museum 2025, at the University of Turku 2023, DOCK 11 theater in Berlin in 2023, Monitaidefestivaali Manifesti in 2022 and in the “duo” exhibition at kunsthalle Kohta in 2021.