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Katriina Haikala is a visual artist, public speaker and corporate trainer. She has made a successful career as an international artist by creating such art projects as Monokini 2.0, The Dresscode and Hairy Underwear Collection. Katriina has exhibited and spoke about her work in e.g. New York City, Washington DC (USA), Tokyo (Japan), Berlin (Germany), Oslo (Norway), Puerto Plata (Dominican Republic). She is also a well-regarded corporate trainer, giving high-end organizational development trainings at Nordic companies. Her playfulness, creativity and controversial combination of careers creates an expertise hard to find.
Speaking to promote your art
The main situations to promote art are openings of the exhibitions, and artists’ talks organized by museums and galleries. If the art gets more attention, it can also be promoted on TV and radio. Sometimes universities ask artists to lecture and speak about their art. If an artist doesn’t promote the art him/herself, a gallery owner or a curator usually does the job.
Her piece of advice on how to promote their art
First of all: Start promoting it. Be proud of what you do, and talk about your work as though is the only thing you want to do in your life.
Secondly: Talk with passion. A good example is Guerrilla Girls, who always talk with passion, often with public speeches.
Her experience in corporate training
Katriina found that the common thing between speaking to promote her art and corporate training is to inspire people by being fearless. Especially in corporate training, people need encouragement as they are often afraid of failure.
Her experience with crowdfunding
Katriina and other artists teamed to launch Monokini 2.0 as a crowdfunding campaign and they learned that the product was too niche and the world was not ready for that. She thinks that artists can use crowdfunding, but it requires expertise in social media and a lot of work.
Favorite quotation
“Do not play by the rules, but know your game.” — Katriina Haikala
Recommended books
Incognito by David Eagleman
Homo Ludens (“Playing Man”) by Johan Huizinga
Routine to Shine
Play every day. Play with ideas, play with the objects around you, play with words, etc.
Links
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