Kuvasto Home Base Janna Syvänoja Porolahden peruskoulun yläaste, Satumaanpolku 2, 00820 Helsinki Indoor Sculpture Home Base by Janna Syvänoja (b. 1960, Helsinki) is installed in the lunch room of the school, the tallest and brightest space in the building. The work consists of 17 circular disks of different sizes, which together form a sphere three metres in diameter. Suspended individually from the ceiling, the disks are overlaid with maps from the Helsinki telephone directory and finished with wax. The disks have holes in them whose radius decreases towards the centre of the sphere; light enters the work through the holes. Porolahti students participated in the making of the work by collecting directory maps. The maps in the work include the location of every student’s home – i.e., their home base. Syvänoja drew inspiration for her work from the systematic nature of mathematics, in particular mathematical order and purpose in nature. She based the work on the eternal shape of the circle, which is both dynamic and static at the same time. Her interest in the formation of a spherical shape is evident in this work. The shape was first dissected into parts that were then reassembled into a three-dimensional object. The work was produced under the Percent for Art programme, and it belongs to the collection of the City of Helsinki, managed by HAM Helsinki Art Museum. At map
