About Tuonen Portti

 

Tuonen Portti is a Finland-based esoteric-visionary artist collective envisioned in late 2020 by Konstantin Tuonihovi and Carita Hännikäinen. The name refers to the gate of Tuonela, the realm of the dead in Kalevala cosmology, and marks the collective’s operative territory as the threshold between ordinary consciousness and what lies beyond it.

Tuonihovi had already conceived the Radio Wyrd podcast in 2012 and begun the Pit installation in 2015; Hännikäinen had been working independently as a visionary painter since 2015. The two brought these practices together to found the collective. Its digital home, tuonenportti.fi, hosts a 200-plus-entry esoteric lexicon and the collective’s Manifesto, which positions its output as art that ”challenges time” and draws on mystical vision rather than institutional training, naming the late journalist-artist Perttu Häkkinen as a key inspiration.

The collective’s podcast, Rihmastosignaali / The Mycelium Signal, launched March 5, 2023 under Tuonihovi’s hosting, continuing the Radio Wyrd lineage, and features long-form conversation with guests across occultism, extreme music, weird fiction, and religious studies. Its physical counterpart is the Pit, a ritual installation begun April 2015 on the site of a demolished cottage and built by hand from materials sourced entirely on-site.

Tuonen Portti has drawn documented academic attention, notably from religious studies scholars.