Jani Leinonen (born 22 March 1978 in

Hyvinkää Hyvinkää (; sv, Hyvinge, ) is a city and municipality of Finland. It is located in the Uusimaa region, approximately north of the capital Helsinki. The city was chartered in 1960. The population of Hyvinkää is (). Its neighboring municipal ...

) is a Finnish visual artist. Leinonen is known for his public artworks criticising capitalism by using the imagery and icons of corporate brands. He graduated from the Helsinki Academy of Fine Arts in 2002.

Artworks and controversies

In January 2011, Leinonen led a group calling themselves the "Food Liberation Army". The group stole a life-size statue of

Ronald McDonald Ronald McDonald is a clown character used as the primary mascot of the McDonald's fast-food restaurant chain. He inhabits the fictional world of McDonaldland, with his friends Mayor McCheese, the Hamburglar, Grimace, Birdie the Early Bird and ...

from a

Helsinki Helsinki ( or ; ; sv, Helsingfors, ) is the Capital city, capital, primate city, primate, and List of cities and towns in Finland, most populous city of Finland. Located on the shore of the Gulf of Finland, it is the seat of the region of U ...

McDonald's McDonald's Corporation is an American Multinational corporation, multinational fast food chain store, chain, founded in 1940 as a restaurant operated by Richard and Maurice McDonald, in San Bernardino, California, United States. They rechri ...

restaurant, and posted videos on their website threatening to "decapitate" the clown if McDonald's would not answer questions about its ethics. However, McDonald's refused to "negotiate with criminals", and the Finnish police raided Leinonen's home, arresting two people and seizing cell phones and computers. In June 2014, Leinonen's

Budapest Budapest (, ; ) is the capital and most populous city of Hungary. It is the ninth-largest city in the European Union by population within city limits and the second-largest city on the Danube river; the city has an estimated population ...

pop-up installation "Hunger King" criticized

Hungary Hungary ( hu, Magyarország ) is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning of the Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the south, Croatia a ...

's law that banned homeless people from sleeping in public areas. The installation imitated a

Burger King Burger King (BK) is an American-based multinational chain store, chain of hamburger fast food restaurants. Headquartered in Miami-Dade County, Florida, the company was founded in 1953 as Insta-Burger King, a Jacksonville, Florida–based res ...

restaurant. In December 2014, a Tokyo gallery removed

Hello Kitty , also known by her full name , is a fictional Character (arts), character created by Yuko Shimizu, currently designed by Yuko Yamaguchi, and owned by the Japanese company Sanrio. Sanrio depicts Hello Kitty as an Anthropomorphism, anthropomorphi ...

and

Doraemon ''Doraemon'' ( ja, ドラえもん ) is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Fujiko F. Fujio. The manga was first serialized in December 1969, with List of Doraemon chapters, its 1,345 individual chapters compiled into 45 ' ...

-branded shoes that were a part of Leinonen's exhibition satirising copyright laws. In 2015, Leinonen was one of the artists invited to the temporary art project ''

Dismaland Dismaland was a temporary art project organised by street artist Banksy in the seaside resort of Weston-super-Mare in Somerset, England. Prepared in secret, the pop-up exhibition at the Tropicana, Weston-super-Mare, Tropicana, a disused Lido (sw ...

'' organised by street artist

Banksy Banksy is a pseudonymous England-based street artist, political activist and film director whose real name and identity remain unconfirmed and the subject of speculation. Active since the 1990s, his satirical street art and subversive epigram ...

. In January 2019, Leinonen's artwork "McJesus", a crucified Ronald McDonald, caused a riot in

Haifa Haifa ( he, חֵיפָה ' ; ar, حَيْفَا ') is the third-largest city in Israel—after Jerusalem and Tel Aviv—with a population of in . The city of Haifa forms part of the Haifa metropolitan area, the third-most populous metropol ...

, Israel. Hundreds of Christian protesters gathered by the Haifa Museum of Art throwing stones at the police, as they were blocked from entering the museum to remove the statue. Leinonen stated that he asked the Museum to remove it in September 2018 but his request was denied, and his art piece was being displayed against his wishes. The Museum staff contacted Leinonen prior to opening the exhibition, asking for the work, and he referred them to the Zetterberg Gallery, which owns the work. The gallery loaned the statue to the museum. It was reported that after Leinonen's request for its removal, the museum contacted the gallery and received approval from them to continue exhibiting the artwork.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Leinonen, Jani 1978 births Living people Anti-consumerists Finnish contemporary artists People from Hyvinkää Political artists