A CHAT WITH ARSENIJ MÅRD

The Sculptor Behind Tommi: A Conversation with Arsenij Mård

"There's a flower pot in Hobo's lobby that looks unmistakably like our head chef. His posture, his energy and a certain quiet authority. It's practical, a little goofy, visually complex, and impossible to walk past without doing a double take. Exactly the kind of object that belongs here.

The person behind it is Arsenij Mård, a ceramics artist and sculpture student in his final year, originally from St. Petersburg, now very much rooted in Helsinki. We sat down with him to talk about the piece, the city, and what it means to build a relationship with visual heritage one object at a time."

Who are you, and what pulls you toward art?

"I started making sculptures at fourteen. I went on to study at the Academy of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg, where the training was rigorous: technical precision was everything. I used to play cello, and there's a similar kind of pressure in both: in the fingertips, in the details, in the pursuit of getting something exactly right. I think of myself more as an artisan than an artist in the traditional sense. I'm not interested in being radical for the sake of it. I'm more interested in building a relationship with visual heritage, working with what already exists, cleaning it up, finding what actually matters."

How did the Tommi sculpture come to life?

"I'd been thinking for a while about creating a lobby piece, something with presence, something that actively engages with whoever passes by. It needed more courage to actually begin. When Hobo came along, it felt like a dream situation.

The idea was to combine a lot of things at once: practicality, personality, the right balance between abstract and figurative. Somewhere between portrait and caricature: just enough to capture Tommi's character, with a goofy quality that makes you smile without quite knowing why."

What does Helsinki mean to you?

"I came here in 2021, when the war started. Nature was what drew me in: the sea in Southern Helsinki, the rock and the forest outside my current home window. The city itself took longer to settle into.

I grew up in central St. Petersburg, surrounded by beauty: in the city's architecture, in the decorated ceilings of the home I grew up in. That's where my interest in sculpture really began.

Helsinki's centre reminds me of home in some ways. A miniature version: the same grandeur, scaled down. I have high expectations of cities, and Helsinki meets them in its own quiet way."

How do you experience the local art scene?

"For me, the art scene here has its own codes. There's a pull toward the radical, the activist, and I respect that, but it's not where I come from. What drives me is excellence in craft. The same focused discipline as playing cello, or working with fine materials. That's where I feel at home.

Getting back into sculpture through school studios was what reconnected me to that. And that's when this project became possible."

You're in your final year studying ceramic artisanship. Where does the road go from here?

"I can't say ceramics will be the thing for the rest of my life, and I think that's fine. What I love about it is the range. Sometimes you make plates. Sometimes you make something like this. It always surprises you.

What I'd love is to work more with interiors and the city: sculptures made for specific spaces, objects that carry the soul of a place. The Tommi piece started as an idea and now it's standing in a hotel lobby in central Helsinki. That still feels significant to me. I want more of that."

If someone wanted to experience Helsinki the way you do, where would you send them?

"Get a bike. Go through Central Park. Swim somewhere. Just slow down and let the city come to you."

Arsenij Mård is a ceramics artist and sculpture student based in Helsinki. The sculpture of Tommi stands in Hobo Helsinki's lobby at Kluuvikatu 4.