EGS – the three letters seen on concrete walls since the late ’80s – belong to a graffiti artist who has expanded his practice beyond the street into glass, connecting places, memories, and works across decades. Moving fluidly from streets to museums, Eva-Liisa spoke with EGS about his journey and what it was like to pursue a passion once considered criminal. Today, his work exists not only in public space but also in galleries and museums, raising questions about how graffiti changes when it enters institutional contexts.His work now explores geography, memory, and imagined worlds, where maps become personal, shifting constructs rather than fixed systems.
You began painting graffiti in Helsinki in the late 1980s. What was the atmosphere of the city like for a young graffiti artist at that time?
Helsinki was much smaller and less international then, positioned in a unique role between East and West. It felt quite separated from Western Europe and the rest of the world. The city was less developed and less polished. In the mid-1980s, you could still see remnants of bomb sites from the Second World War.
At the same time, the city was starting to grow fast, and Finland was building more connections to Europe and beyond. New influences like graffiti began to arrive. Information about anything new and exciting was very limited compared to today. In many ways, it was a perfect environment for an adventurous, DIY culture – you had to figure things out for yourself. Before the internet, traveling to paint trains and walls across Europe involved real uncertainty.
Everything was very analogue. Information and contacts were shared through zines and letters, and most connections were made by physically meeting people. You’d arrive in a new city and might, by chance, meet someone connected to graffiti.
Phone numbers were exchanged, and over a few years, my friends and I built a kind of underground continental network. In almost every city, you had someone to call who could introduce you to local writers. But first, you needed coins for the payphone.
How do you see graffiti today? How has it changed?
Graffiti has grown into a huge global movement. Information is everywhere now and can feel overwhelming, and people connect through digital networks, meaning some of the mystery has disappeared.
At the same time, there is incredible graffiti being painted all over the world, and artists from the scene are showing work in major museums. The culture has expanded in multiple directions at once.
Graffiti usually exists in public space, often temporarily. What happens to that energy when the work moves into museums and galleries? Does graffiti lose its edge once it enters institutional spaces?
Yes, in some ways it does – the raw context is difficult to transfer. One of the most honest ways to present graffiti in institutions is through documentation such as photography, film, and interviews.
Many artists also choose not to bring graffiti directly into galleries as painted pieces. Instead, it becomes a foundation that informs and shapes their contemporary practice.
Over the years, your practice has expanded into sculpture and blown glass. What drew you toward working with glass as a material?
I love working with glass. In this digital world, it is very physical, and the techniques and tools are still very similar to what they were centuries ago.
There is a lot of adrenaline and unpredictability in the process – you cannot control everything. Accidents and failures influence the final work, and for me, that unpredictability is essential.
You frequently use map-like imagery. What role does geography play in expressing history and memory in your art?
Travel has always been part of my life and my work. In the analogue days, I used to travel in bookstores, in the travel section, looking at maps and foreign subway and transport systems – I travelled in my imagination.
Maps are a way to understand the world, but also to question it. They are never neutral; they reflect power, history, and perspective. Who draws the map – and for what purpose? For peace, or for war?
The lines on maps are among the strongest lines people draw. They can both unite and divide.
In my work, geography becomes something personal and fictional at the same time. I am interested in how places are remembered, imagined, and reconstructed. The Republic of EGS is one way of building an alternative, subjective geography.
Where do you get your inspiration? Can you tell us about your workflow?
Inspiration comes from movement: traveling, walking, observing cities, and collecting fragments. Graffiti is still a part of it, but so is architecture, maps, signs, and accidental details in the environment.
My workflow moves between drawing, painting, walking, and getting lost – shifting between structured and intuitive approaches. I leave space for accidents, for things I did not plan.
After decades of working across streets, trains, galleries, and museums, what still motivates you to keep writing EGS?
EGS started as a random name. I liked how the letters looked and worked in graffiti and typography. Over time, it has become a system and a way of thinking. It connects different works, places, and moments, allowing me to move freely between contexts. After all these years, it still feels open and evolving.
I sometimes think of it as a typewriter with only three keys – I write stories with those three letters. Each work adds to and subtly reshapes what EGS can mean.
Could you tell us about your new exhibition, Consulate of EGS, which will open in April at the Pop & Contemporary Art Museum in Tallinn?
Consulate of EGS is a new chapter in the ongoing Embassy of EGS series, where I expand the fictional Republic of EGS through painting, installation, sculpture, and site-responsive work.
The exhibition at PoCo in Tallinn connects to the shared – but very different – histories of Helsinki and Tallinn, as well as to my long relationship with the city. I have been working in Tallinn since the mid-1990s, especially in industrial areas, abandoned factories, and self-organised graffiti sites.
One of the central elements of the exhibition is a collaboration with Tallinn-based artist Viktor Gurov and Tallinna Kunstikeraamika Tehas. Together, we produce a series of hand-painted ceramic plates inspired by the former Keraamika factory in Kopli, where I worked for about fifteen years when the area was partly abandoned. The plates translate something very temporary – graffiti on walls – into a durable ceramic form, merging personal history with the city’s shifting industrial landscape.
My connection to Estonia started earlier. As a child, I visited Tallinn many times during the Soviet period – it felt close, but also different. That experience shaped how I see cities, borders, and the space in between. In 2004, I discovered the Keraamika factory area in Kopli. It felt like a hidden world inside the city: some parts still active, others completely empty, with endless surfaces to paint. Over the years, it became one of my key working environments.
In 2009, I met Viktor Gurov there by chance while painting, and that meeting developed into a long-term collaboration. For this exhibition, we return to that place through a new installation. We create ceramic plates at the current factory – the continuation of the old one – with imagery drawn from fragments of paintings and drawings that once existed on the walls there, now translated into fired clay.
The plates are presented as part of a larger wall installation: a kind of abstract map of the Keraamika area and the Kopli Peninsula drawn in my visual language. The map works like a field of memory, where past and present overlap, and each plate becomes a fragment from a place that has already changed.
Where can we spot an EGS graffiti piece in the streets?
They appear in different places: in cities, towns, and forgotten locations. Not announced, not fixed – sometimes very visible, sometimes almost disappearing.
You find them by accident. That is part of the logic: movement, chance, and discovery.