After opening the presents delivered by the Three Magi during the night, I drove to the pastelería to get a roscón de reyes, kings' cake, a toroid formed bun filled with whipped cream eaten in Spain in Epiphany. Then I decided to pass by the studio to collect my mail which included two invitations to my solo shows. That can be a unique moment in my career but probably it's exaggerating to consider it an epiphany (described as "an illuminating realization or discovery, often resulting in a personal feeling of elation, awe, or wonder").

We'll see if I get the plastic toy surprise hidden inside the roscón, it brings luck and but also responsibility - the lucky person pays the cake too.

The Balkanroute is closed as we witnessed in our field trip from Lesbos to London last fall. 

My prognostication is that most of the migrants arrive this year to Europe through Spain. This path has been closed ten years by the Euro-Moroccan treaties and the deep economic crisis of Spain but now it will be again the most viable gateway to Europe.

Syrian Arab Army expulses terrorists from the Levantine soil. The islamist make Libya their stronghold. NATO bombs Libya. The full scale war detours the migration from Libya to Morocco. 

The first day of the year over one thousand men tried to climb the concertina trimmed fences to Ceuta, a man packed in a suitcase was detected at the same border and hundreds of people stranded to Andalucian beaches.

The routes can change but Europe will be an archipelago of refugee camps if the absence of peace and prosperity continues in Africa and Western Asia. We must fight for a world where nobody has a need to leave his home involuntarily. Happy New Year!

I've been rather hardworking this year. I finished the paintings for my show at Galerie Forsblom including 100 blue and white monochromes. I did The ABC of Capitalism, a big show at Bury Art Museum and also smaller solo shows at Ti-la and the Swedish Nationalmuseum. However, the most exciting project has been Closing Borders, the show that opens in February at Serlachius Museums. The preparations took me to two field trips across countless exterior borders of the European Union.

This Christmas I'm not asking anything for myself, I have everything I need, but I ask you to provide the Syrian people with anything necessary to finish the war, neutralize the terrorists (both extremist and moderate) and make their country great again.

Un abrazo muy fuerte, Riiko 

I spent November traveling around Europe but this month I stay at home trying to be a good father to my children: we play football, paddle and cards, I read them bedtime stories and drive them to their hobbies: music classes, dancing classes and horseback riding classes.

I facebooked a video of my son riding and an American friend commented that he's happy for my success and thinks I'm like Jeff Koons. I had never thought that my kids' hobby could be seen as a status symbol. 

Mr Koons, a multimillionaire, represents art as a glamorous business. I admire him because he's everything what I hate. My own contradiction is that I also hate everything what I represent - I've become a stereotype of a white privileged middle-class man. I have a big house, a big mortgage, a home alarm system, a SUV, a remote controlled electric gate and a plastic Christmas tree. Pervertedly, I'm proud that I have achieved this standard of living by painting subversive pictures.

I'm listing here some things I saw during the second leg of the Border Field Trip from Lesvos to London through the Balkanroute.

- Mountains of hundreds of thousands of life jackets in Lesvos, including many with pictures of Disney Princesses and Captain America and featuring the text "this is not a life saving device". Even the misery makes profit for the American entertainment empire that controls the privatized global childhood.

- Visits to refugee camps of all types in several countries -  closed, open, official, improvised, legal, illegal, dirty, model. Our white man privilege refugee camp tourism - driving premium rental cars and relaxing in the spas of luxury hotels.

- Police custody and interrogation in Greece for taking photos of a refugee camp. We were also interrogated by police in Serbia for taking photos of a refugee camp between the border lines.

- Entering to Hungary, which is a Schengen country - which means we were crossing the border to home. We were asked where we go and why. Could I just have said that we were going home?

- The ruins of Calais Jungle. The destruction of the humble makeshift property of the weakest people.

- The public space below the metro tracks around Stalingrad area in Paris closed with fences. The borders are moving to the centers. The refugees and migrants without papers form the Fifith World in the Eruopean cities. For them even the marginalized Fourth World of homelessness and prostitution is not accesible. I'm going to develop further the concept of the Fifth World, a condition were waiting and inactivity become a permanent state.

- The kilometers of concertina razor wire which covers our continent. Now it doesn't surprise me why its biggest producer European Security Fencing is one of fastes growing companies in the European Union. Many of the companies that sell security services and material to EU's Frontex are also the biggest companies exporting military equipment to the conflicts of the Middle East. We sell death and we buy security.

Where the streets have no name