My artistic practice over the past ten years from about 2004-2014 encompasses collage art, photography, film and sound art, often using elements of performance. I mostly work with found imagery and found sounds. The objectified self is contrasted with the subjectivity of emotional truth. I aim to raise questions to do with imprisonment inside the body and mind, identity, connection, social adaptation and the survival of the spiritual self.
My work explores the relationship between the collective and the individual consciousness. How do we retain a true and honest sense of self in the face of peer pressure and social discrimination? How do you overcome the shame that comes from marginalisation? How do we reconcile with our need for approval and the sense of belonging? And finally - how do we live life and face mortality in the best possible way?
I'm a Finnish visual artist resident in Wales, United Kingdom. Since 1991, I have gone from drawing to creating mixed media collages to artist's films and sound art. Photography has always been in my life as part of my upbringing in a family of professional photographers, and became more important thanks to digitalisation. In recent years, I've been including performance art by staging myself for photographs and video clips that I use in my artwork. In this way, I'm able to highlight the semiotic quality of a decaying body - from a subjective and objective point of view all at once - and how it impacts my senses and experience of being in the world. I've always been fascinated with texture, and often incorporate photographs of aesthetically challenging yet pleasing surfaces found in the most unlikely of places into my work. 2D work that I plan for the future will be texture orientated and most likely of a relatively high degree of abstraction and definitely of high emotionally expressive value.
My personal experience of a chronic illness inspires me to promote mental, emotional, physical and spiritual health in a world mostly designed for the wealthy and healthy.
I lay out view points on the human condition, questioning the sanity of society and the collective consciousness, and seek answers to many of the challenges and dilemmas that humans are facing. My work is psychologically orientated and the survival of the individual self when immersed in the collective consciousness, as well as times of liminality and transition, are especially intriguing to me. Through a process of physical and emotional deconstruction and reconstruction, as well as seeking out the beauty in that which is old and forgotten, I attempt to bring attention to imperfection, decay, vulnerability, the value of emotions and humanness in general. I like to point to the fact that we are multidimensional beings rather than rational robots. I often employ subtle irony to underline anomaly.
My work expresses paradox, as a fundamental and crucial characteristic of reality. While ill health and alienation are linked with shame and helplessness, these can also give rise to strength of character, deeper insights into matters of life and death, and the advantage of a more objective viewpoint in regards to society at large. Afflicted with a chronic illness since childhood, Through my art, I express the idea that imperfection is human, whereas a glossy and sanitised world certainly is not. Ultimately, because I'm not a fully functioning and able-bodied member of society, neither my abilities nor my expression will ever be perfect. Human imperfection and deviance from norms is something that those who represent society still need to tackle. I believe I speak for everyone who have had to concede that they cannot keep up with the demands of contemporary society. Not until society embraces its disabled members, can it become whole.
Imperfection in all its forms is essential to a healthier body and mind. My collages, abstract photography, artist films and sound art thus tend towards that which isn't too sleek and sanitised. Apart from the symbolic language that I use, texture and layering is how I aim to express depth of meaning. My belief is that the subconscious and the conscious mind should collaborate to create something that can be understood by many people from various points of view, and isn't left to chance. I cherish figurative as well as a non-figurative expression, and often blend the two. In short, my art is about a sincere dialogue, but also about the art of living life mindfully, intelligently and deeply.