Timo Ahjotuli is a contemporary artist, who has worked with sculpture, installations, and photography since 2013. He has participated in numerous group exhibitions and projects both in Finland and abroad. Ahjotuli is best known for his installation sculptures, which have been exhibited at many popular art events, such as Demolition Art Wonderland X, Wiurila Summer, the Helsinki Urban Art Festival, and Wasa Graffitilandia.

Inspired by dystopian machine-like form language, Ahjotuli reflects on the challenges and melancholia of living. In his work, futuristic structures grow from spaces and bodies like mechanical plants. The piece created for the Mänttä Art Festival is one in Ahjotuli’s series of location-bound installation sculptures featuring figurative form language. The pieces in the series resemble dialogue between the artist and the space. “The space calls out, and I respond.”

Antti Arkoma is a painter and sculptor, who in recent years has focused more on painting. While Arkoma values aesthetics highly, he also emphasises story-telling and messages related to themes such as the human longing for intimacy and the fear of loneliness. His paintings feature a certain location or environment, and in fact, some people only see in them the space or its characteristics. The theme for the collection of pieces Arkoma has created for the Mänttä Art Festival is the dialogue between two people. He hopes that visitors will also examine the theme from a wider, global perspective. His aim is to promote constructive and interactive contemplation, rather than destructive thinking.

Sara Bjarland is a Finnish artist living in Amsterdam. She studied at the Slade School of Fine Art in London, graduating in 2007. Bjarland has held several solo exhibitions in the Netherlands, Finland, Belgium, and Sweden, among others. In 2020, she was awarded the William Thuring Prize by the Finnish Art Society, and in 2019 she was nominated for the Below Zero Prize, intended for Finnish artists. Her pieces are included in the collections of the Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art, the Jenny and Antti Wihuri Foundation, as well as many other art collections in Finland and abroad.

As an artist duo Michal Czinege and Maija Laurinen explore intricate phenomena between perception, reality and the observer. Their installations are often site-specific and durational, and they employ multidisciplinary media together with light and space. By offering cues to perceptual ephemera that elude direct human sensory faculties, Czinege and Laurinen aim to communicate something fundamental about the way human perception relates to the world we inhabit. Inexplicable perceptual events in their works open up perspectives that challenge the anthropocentric, often routine-like and narrow ways in which we tend to interpret reality.

Michal and Maija met during their student days in Bratislava at Michal’s exhibition opening in the Academy of Fine Arts gallery. Maija was studying cinematography at the time, while for Michal fine arts had always been a clear path to take. Since then, both have earned their Doctor of Arts degrees from the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava (2011 & 2019). Nowadays the Slovak-Finnish couple live in Puu-Nurmes at the heart of a small North Karelian town with their rescue dog Possu, who moved with them from Slovakia.

In addition to the couple's joint work, Czinege's Garden of Death will also be on display. Painted with wood ash and earth pigment, the installation brings out of the twilight the afterimages of extinct plants.

While Erika Erre works mainly with three-dimensional pieces, she doesn’t restrict herself to a single medium. Rather, she prefers to use various materials and ways of working without prejudice. In her pieces, Erre often deals with notable opposites, such as life and death, good and evil, sorrow and happiness, or the individual and the masses. She likes to remove objects and materials from their typical context, thus using her choice of materials to lend dark humour even to serious or tragic themes.

Through her piece Matka (“The Journey”), created for the Mänttä Art Festival, Erre aims to make us imagine what it would be like to be a small bird, flying over huge mountains, or a giant so huge that it could crush those puny mountains.

Reetta Gröhn-Soininen Reetta Gröhn-Soininen is a Joensuu-based sculptor, who in 1993 graduated from what was then known as the Turku Drawing School. Her piece Kuolon niityt (“The Fields of Death”), to be exhibited at the Mänttä Art Festival, is one in a series called Kuoleman puutarhurit (“The Gardeners of Death”). The series emerged through personal mourning in 2020, and has later been inspired by global mourning in our war-filled world. As sorrow and longing change their form with time, Gröhn-Soininen thinks of the field of death as a comforting interspace, where the gardeners of death lovingly tend their flowers. It is like a rite of passage, with the flowers symbolising human life – its beginning, bloom, and end. We stroke the hand of a newborn baby and a dying person with equal tenderness.

Sculptor Timo Hannunen has participated in many solo and group exhibitions both in Finland and abroad. His sculptures often reflect his thoughts and his current frame of mind, fused with observations of his environment to varying degrees. Another recurrent element in his pieces is the concept of time, strongly bound to stone. To Hannunen, the physical aspect of the work and the travel involved in it are often almost as important as the result, and he hopes that a certain presence rubs off on his pieces during the journey.

Hannunen doesn’t usually make sketches of his pieces; he simply begins a dialogue with the material and lets it take him wherever it wants, if it wants. The collection of works he is exhibiting at the Mänttä Art Festival is made of pieces of natural stone that he found in his garden and the nearby forest, or extracted from his drive with a tractor.

A graduate of the Uniarts Helsinki Academy of Fine Arts, Alma Heikkilä works with paintings, installations, and sculptures. Her pieces are included in many collections, such as those of the Finnish National Gallery, the Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art, the Malmö Art Museum, and the Espoo Museum of Modern Art. She has held numerous solo exhibitions and has contributed to group exhibitions both in Finland and abroad.

In her practice, Heikkilä portrays things that cannot be experienced through human senses: microbic forms of life; woodland ecosystems where the important processes take place below the ground and within plants; and phenomena whose speed and scale are beyond our comprehension. According to Heikkilä, her pieces are a collaboration between her, the materials, and natural phenomena. She primarily uses paints and plaster, as well as techniques that enable pigments and liquids to form spontaneous patterns on surfaces.

Johannes Heikkilä studied printmaking at the Uniarts Helsinki Academy of Fine Arts. Having graduated in 2019, he now lives in Rovaniemi in northern Finland. Heikkilä specialises in woodcutting, woodprinting, and painting. His pieces portray things beyond perception and reality, which occupy the fractured spaces between the imaginary and the observable. They are abstract figurative entities, projections, and images of the reality and its aberrations. A piece by Heikkilä is a place, an experience, a moment of understanding, and a pause at the same time. Architecture and constructed spaces are also present in Heikkilä’s practice. His art features human images, traces of existence, and imprints of the past.

Touko Hujanen is a Helsinki-based photojournalist and artist who specialises in long-term reportage projects. His works have been published in papers and magazines such as The New York Times, Time, Esquire, Helsingin Sanomat, and X. He is chairman of the Finnish photojournalists’ collective Yksitoista, and publisher of the Uuden Maan Sanomat newspaper. He has won multiple awards, including Finnish Photojournalist of the Year (2019, 2018), Finnish Press Photographer of the Year (2011), and Young Finnish Press Photographer of the Year (2009). Lately, he has been working on exhibitions and books. He graduated with a Master’s degree in Visual Journalism from the University of Tampere.

Kaisa Huotari specialises in expanded painting. In her practice, she often touches upon themes that revolve around human memories and the mind, the mundane and the everyday, and individuals’ relationship with nature. Her works contain surrealistic elements and aberrations that challenge the way we look at and observe our surroundings. Huotari’s practice stems from her desire to highlight specific perspectives and call attention to details that she considers important. For her, art means exploring subtle and silent phenomena through visual and creative means. It is the pursuit of a means of communication when no words can be found.

Anna Hyrkkänen is a Tampere-based artist, whose pieces can be found in the collections of the Jenny and Antti Wihuri Foundation, the Finnish Art Society, Satakunta University of Applied Sciences, and the Finnish state. Working with spatial and light installations as well as sculpture, her practice revolves around the concepts of time and place, and the body. The notion of time and place always transfers from the microcosmos within our bodies into the sensory space and environment. Hyrkkänen’s pieces often emerge from her exploration of light in different spaces and on different materials. Lately, she has derived inspiration from her interest in brain studies and neurosciences. She is fascinated by the intertwining of the human body, mind, brain, and consciousness.

At the Mänttä Art Festival, Anna Hyrkkänen is exhibiting Superpositio, a work of art inspired by brain research and information obtained through science. It highlights mechanisms that link the human body, brain, mind, and consciousness and enable them to function together, creating a constantly changing and evolving microcosmos with its own rules.

Essi Immonen is a Helsinki-based artist, who works extensively with sculpting, installations, construction, crafting, composition, printing, words, and imagination. Her practice is space- and material-oriented, and she often feels like she is mainly working with the associations, perceived values, and haptic qualities related to her materials. Immonen finished her artist’s studies at the Saimaa University of Applied Sciences in 2018, then completed a Master’s degree in Fine Arts at the Uniarts Helsinki Academy of Fine Arts in 2023. Most recently, her works have been exhibited in places such as Galleria G and the SIC exhibition space and Vallila Greenhouse in Helsinki, and in Quebec, Canada.

Essi Immonen on helsinkiläinen kuvataiteilija, joka työskentelee laajasti muun muassa kuvanveiston, installoinnin, rakentelun, askartelun, sommittelun, paina(utu)misen, sanojen ja mielikuvittelun keinoin. Immonen työskentelee tila- ja materiaalilähtöisesti, ja usein hän kokeekin työskentelevänsä ensisijaisesti käyttämissään materiaaleissa kuhisevien mielleyhtymien, arvolatausten ja haptisuuksien parissa. Immonen on valmistunut kuvataiteilijaksi (AMK) Saimaan Ammattikorkeakoulusta vuonna 2018 ja kuvataiteen maisteriksi Kuvataideakatemiasta viime vuonna. Hänen teoksiaan on ollut esillä viime vuosina esillä muun muassa Galleria G:ssä, SIC-galleriassa ja Vallilan kasvihuoneella Helsingissä sekä Quebecissä Kanadassa.

Inka-Maaria Jurvanen, from Vantaa, works primarily with pencils. She draws on many kinds of materials, including plywood, marble, granite, pieces of wood, and bowls made from tree knots. Her pieces vary in size from small drawings to large installations.

Jurvanen graduated from Art School Maa in 2008, and she also holds a degree from the former EVTEK Institute of Art and Design, where she studied graphic design. Her works have been exhibited both in Finland and internationally since 2006. In 2023, Jurvanen was awarded the William Thuring Prize by the Finnish Art Society. She has organised and curated several group exhibitions and created murals for both private and public spaces. Jurvanen’s pieces are found in the collections of the Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art and the State Art Commission.

Riikka Keränen is a visual artist and general worker based in Ristijärvi. She graduated from the Kankaanpää School of Fine Art in 2010 with a degree in sculpture. Keränen likes to play and engage in dialogue with diverse materials, and often reflects upon the intertwining nature of human and non-human worlds. The artist’s work includes sculptures, installations, and location-bound environmental pieces, which have been created using a variety of techniques. In recent years, she has also produced several pieces for public spaces.

Ritva Kovalainen lives and works on the island of Kemiönsaari in southern Finland. She was introduced to photography in the early 1980s, when she started her studies at the former University of Industrial Arts, and it has played an important role in her life and work ever since. Apart from a few years spent teaching, she has worked as an independent artist, and her photos have been seen in books, exhibitions, and films alike. She is particularly interested in forests, trees, and landscapes, but also in human beings and their relationship with the surrounding biosphere.

Kovalainen’s work involves getting to know her subject and producing information, as well as writing and photography. The adaptation of photos and text for different media of expression plays a key role in what she does. Photography is the first part of the process, but what happens after taking the photos also affects the result. How should one portray the aesthetic or spiritual integrity of an object, book, or film to produce a unique and original photographic dialogue?

Juho Könkkölä, from Jyväskylä, creates sculpture-like, human-themed origami art. He folded his first origami pieces when he was quite young, but in 2018, he stopped simply following instructions and began creating original origami sculptures. After graduating from the Lapland University of Applied Sciences with a Bachelor’s degree in Culture and Arts, he has worked with origami art. His pieces have been exhibited in both Finland and abroad, with exhibitions in places such as Venice, London, and New York. He has also taught origami at international events.

Könkkölä derives inspiration for his human characters from many sources, such as history, mythology, folktales, and fantasy worlds. He works methodically using traditional Japanese origami techniques, and the process involves numerous stages, from designing the folds to preparing the paper to folding the many tiny details. Making a single origami sculpture takes from a few weeks to several months, sometimes even years.

Based on the island of Reposaari outside Pori, where the Bothnian Sea provides a background to her days, Laura Lilja uses recycled, borrowed, and natural materials to create insightful works of art with social themes that recur in her pieces one way or another. Lilja studied in the PALLAS programme at the University of Industrial Arts in Helsinki, completing her Master’s degree in 2004. Her pieces are included in the collections of the Finnish State Art Commission, the Jenny and Antti Wihuri Foundation, the Kuntsi Museum of Modern Art, the Lönnström Art Museum, and the Pori Art Museum, among others.

Hanna Marno is a sculptor and environmental artist based in Siikainen, Northern Satakunta. Having lived in a small village for the last several years, she has larch buds for breakfast and lunch. After a hard day’s work, her dinner is more varied: a portion of lime for the muscles, aspen for the blood, and some cinnamon webcaps to improve the eyesight. For supper, she has a cup of rye and graphite porridge, because the night needs shelter. Her canine companion, Mauri, keeps a close eye on the bowls filled with these goodies.

In her art, Marno studies landscapes, communities, power structures, and their material and multilingual qualities, suggesting encounters between different environments. “What is the glue that binds us?” she asks.

Pori-based artist Jussi Matilainen trained as a painter, but these days, he works a lot with digital media. He ended up working with moving images mainly through performing arts. From video performances and material produced for use in performance art, he has moved on to animation and camera work. Rather than telling complete stories, his video pieces often consist of slowly changing images. He is fascinated by the structure of images, as well as the different ways images can be put together and pulled apart, and these are recurring themes in his practice. Through repetition and overlaps, Matilainen looks for alternatives to the linear editing of moving images and to projection models based on a single point of observation.

Anne Meskanen-Barman’s installation-like pieces are often characterised by structures integrated with or penetrated by parts of varying sizes. Combining elements with existing architectural structures, she creates pieces and stories in which spatial and material features play a key role. What cannot be seen is also important. In her practice, Meskanen-Barman often observes the relationship between humans and nature in a slightly bizarre way. Her sculptures imitate existing objects and things, but a closer look reveals an aberration that makes the piece surreal, surprising, and humorous.

In addition to working as an artist, Haidi Motola is currently a doctoral student at the Uniarts Helsinki Academy of Fine Arts. In her research, she focuses on archives, memory, and political imagination in colonial contexts. Since 2016, she has also been a member of Activestills, a collective of documentary photographers using their work to address the decolonial struggles in Palestine. Her most recent piece, Esperia, is an in-progress short film tetralogy that shifts between the documentary and the artistic, the reflexive and the expressive, exploring the themes of memory, identity, and storytelling.

Salla Myllylä is a Helsinki-based artist and researcher, who graduated from the Free Art School in 2009 and the Uniarts Helsinki Academy of Fine Arts in 2014. She is currently working on her dissertation at Uniarts Helsinki, and her research deals with composition from the point of view of the creator and the viewer of the piece. Her artistic practice is location-bound and relies on moving images. Her pieces have been exhibited in places such as Galleria Huuto, Haihatus, Frankfurter Kunstverein, and Kunsthal Charlottenborg, as well as festivals including the Tampere Film Festival and Japan Media Arts.

Laura Vainikka works with graphic arts in diverse ways. Her pieces often deal with questions regarding the starting points of images and observation – how and where images emerge, and what their relationship with perception is. Vainikka graduated from the Uniarts Helsinki Academy of Fine Arts in 2013. Her works have been exhibited at the Nordic Contemporary Print Triennial 2020 in Sweden, and in Gallery Hippolyte and Kunsthalle Helsinki, to name but a few.

The Claude Room installation to be exhibited at the Mänttä Art Festival is Myllylä and Vainikka’s first collaborative art project. Inspired by the Claude glass, an optical instrument invented in the 18th century, it combines moving images and elements of graphic art. The videos were shot in Helsinki, Kellokoski, Sauvo, and Paris between 2019 and 2020, and the installation was first exhibited in Galleria G in Helsinki in 2021. For the Mänttä Art Festival, the pair will film new material in Mänttä during winter and spring 2023–2024.

Reima Nevalainen graduated from the Kankaanpää School of Fine Arts in 2008, and was awarded Young Artist of the Year in 2016. Based in Porvoo, Nevalainen has held numerous solo exhibitions in Finland, other European countries, the United States, and Japan, and his works are housed in the collections of the Helsinki Art Museum and the Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art, among others.

The collage and décollage technique used by Nevalainen is closely intertwined with the subjects of his paintings. His pieces are the result of a multi-layered process involving cutting, tearing, and covering. The technique is a laborious combination of adding and removing, experimenting and making errors. For Nevalainen, painting means studying the physical reality and the way it is observed; it is a counterforce for the immaterial images that surround us. A painting makes us stop and awaken, it cleanses us – but it doesn’t do so by calling for attention, but by finding its shape through intent observation.

Petri Nuutinen is a freelance photographer, who has also worked as a visual journalist, press photographer, and graphic designer. He has worked with landscapes and space since the 1980s. In the early days, his projects were mainly black and white and documentary by nature. These days, Nuutinen examines the spatial impression of the two-dimensional image, striving to convey a stronger impression of the places he photographs. His method gives the images their final shape, which is different every time. By combining several images shot from different perspectives into one piece, he breaks the rectangular boundaries of traditional photographs, yet without losing the documentary nature of the medium. Nuutinen has always been interested in the reflections of their creators in photographs, whether developed with chemicals in black and white or printed digitally. He prints some of his work on paper and some on gesso aluminium sheets.

Artist Antti Oikarinen lives in Riihimäki in southern Finland. The ultimate theme in his artistic endeavours is a single question: what kind of creatures are works of art? He is interested in the basic concepts of fine arts, such as painting, sculpture, performance, meaning, and content. His pieces emerge through the contemplation of questions related to concepts within art. In his practice, Oikarinen makes use of different materials, such as plaster, MDF sheets, acrylic paint, and marble. He has also used ready-made objects as elements. Although Oikarinen’s pieces could generally be considered sculptures, he also paints and draws. Oikarinen works in-between various forms of expression, and many of his pieces are a fusion of painting and sculpture.

A sculptor from Rauma, a town in south-west Finland, Katri Paunu graduated from the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in the Netherlands in 2018. Paunu has held numerous solo exhibitions in both Finland and abroad, and she has also participated in many international group exhibitions. Paunu works mainly with ceramics, as it enables her to combine her love of painting, architecture, and sculpting.

Ingeborg Blom Andersskog and Maria Pääkkönen form an artist duo working with lengthy drawing performances, which sometimes leave a more lasting imprint in the form of an installation. The collaboration of the two women is a continuous process revolving around the exploration of duration, repetition, and bodily communication. Improvisation, presence, possibilities, and uncertainty are at the core of Andersskog and Pääkkönen’s performances, which only emerge as they take place. Certain premeditated limitations and materials provide a framework for the piece, within which anything can happen. The unexpected springs from facing the challenges of the long duration of the performances together.

Andersskog and Pääkkönen met at the Rejmyre Art Lab in Sweden in 2016, while they were attending the Nordic Studio: Clearcut workshop. Each was instantly attracted by the other’s way of observing her surroundings, which gave rise to the idea of collaboration. They presented their first collaboration, You Are I Am You, at the Superb! Contemporary Art Festival in Turku, Finland in 2019, followed by their second performance and installation, Drawing Down the Moon, at Visningsrommet USF in Bergen, Norway in 2022.

Anni Rapinoja is a sculptor based on the island of Hailuoto in Bothnian Bay. Starting in the 1980s, she has held numerous solo exhibitions in both Finland and abroad, and she has also participated in many international group exhibitions. Her works are included in many art collections in Finland and abroad, and she has been an honorary member of the Association of Finnish Sculptors since 2021. Rapinoja’s pieces are often created as a series, from materials collected from nature, such as willow catkins, cottongrass, reeds, bog bilberry leaves, conifer cones, and elk bones. The contribution of nature is almost always clearly discernible in her pieces, and the materials used are identifiable. According to Rapinoja, she simply works as nature’s messenger. The majority of her pieces are objects placed on the floor, wall, or ceiling, but some are placed in the landscape as pieces of environmental art. Some of Rapinoja’s works of art even find form as video clips or photographs.

Anne Roininen creates conceptual spatial pieces using varying techniques, ranging from the use of sculptural elements to talking to people. Her latest pieces have been analyses of the urban environment, the suburban woods, and the essence of objects. She often uses context as the starting point for her creations – in which context and at what scale will the piece be exhibited, and what will the mood be at the exhibition venue?

Dealing with everyday phenomena and conceptualisation, Roininen’s work is quite socially charged. She uses her pieces to create wormholes between different groups of people, reaches towards her fellow beings, and includes the entire world in her art. She is interested in different audiences, different manners of exhibition, questions of accessibility, and ways to make art intertwine with society. She admires works of art with a clear idea and simple execution, which make the viewer feel that the piece conceals something more. Roininen’s aim is to come up with ever new ways to work as an artist within society.

Melissa Sammalvaara is an adventurous artist based in Espoo. She has been working as an artist since completing her Master’s degree at Aalto University in 2019. Her works can be found in the Finnish State Art Deposit, Institut Finlandais in Paris, as well as the largest private textile art collection in Finland. Sammalvaara is currently experimenting with rya rugs, finding new approaches and techniques to combine with more traditional working methods. Sammalvaara creates her pieces by hand using various techniques: weaving, knotting, and tufting, occasionally even knitting. Nature and our relationship with it inspire her greatly, which is evident in her mossy, luscious art and her preference for ecological and second-hand materials.

Sammalvaara’s slow and methodical work with textiles can be seen as a protest against our ever faster rhythm of life and our ever shorter attention spans. She creates the majority of her pieces by hand from recycled materials. Slow does not equal dull, though: she improvises her rya patterns as she ties, thus creating lively and spontaneous surfaces.

Nora Sederlöf graduated from the Uniarts Helsinki Academy of Fine Arts in 2022. With a background in clothing design and tailoring, she employs previously learned techniques in her current artistic practice. Sederlöf specialises in sculptural installations, all of which incorporate textiles. As clothing designers are accustomed, Sederlöf treats her artistic endeavours as collections. She approaches her work like a three-dimensional game, where one action influences the next. The colours and tones within her pieces are not arbitrary; they are meticulously selected not only for their visual aspects but also for their significance and associations.

Sederlöf likes to explore materials, colours, shapes, the refraction of light and shadow, and the spatial dynamics within, between, and around the sculpture. Characterised by abstraction, her sculptures embody a pursuit of abundance and extravagance. Her motto is clear: “More is more. Less is a bore.”

Sanni Seppo is a Helsinki-based photographic artist. "For me, the camera is a tool for discovering the world around me, and a companion for my curiosity. Photography is a pathway to places that draw me in, places that I want to describe. That path has brought me into communities where fragile dreams of a better world take shape. It has brought me to the intersection of nature and humanity, where I’ve examined both our past and future relationship. My work is simultaneously research, immersion, and an endless search of and experimentation with modes of expression. With my art, I want to foment societal change, bring to light themes that are dear to me, and to be even a small thorn in the side of economic development that destroys nature and people alike."

“My art imitates the nature of the universe, where randomness is part of a perfect plan.” In her artistic practice, Rosalia Silfer uses anything available between heaven and earth. She collects pieces of life wherever she goes and creates worlds out of her collections. Through her art, Silfer explores and marvels at the existence of the smallest details and life’s great mysteries alike.

Based in Helsinki, Maria Tani has exhibited her art both in Finland and abroad. She uses fine-tipped ink pens to create detailed drawings, or crochets imaginative textiles. Tani’s favourite subjects include fungi, fantasy creatures, and marine life. When she isn’t busy crocheting giant jellyfish or drawing her exquisitely detailed pieces, Tani creates performance art and other art projects with her sister Satu.

Tampere-based sculptor Hanna Vihriälä creates her pieces from beads, recycled plastics, and other materials, treating them as three-dimensional aquarelles, which she adapts to each exhibition venue. She has always been interested in the sphere that remains somewhere between sculpture, painting, and graphic art. She is also fascinated by the material tension between permanence and fragility. While Vihriälä bases her pieces on personal encounters and observations, she feels that, in a sense, the human experience is always the same – life is always characterised by the fragility between joy, hope, and sorrow.