Riina Õun | “Artists Are Present” (estonia)

Riina is a biodesigner, artist and materials researcher. Her background is in leather accessory design, and she is the founder of Riina O, a brand specialising in luxury leather gloves. Having lived and worked in London for many years, she has developed a distinctive practice that combines craftsmanship, experimental design, and an interest in natural materials.
In her recent work, bio-based materials, craftsmanship, circular design, and experimental making come together. She works with living and natural materials, exploring how natural processes, microorganisms, and by-products can become starting points for creating new materials and objects.

For her, nature is not merely a source of inspiration but an active participant in the creative process – through working with materials, she observes their growth, transformation, properties, and potential.

An important part of Riina’s practice is movement, learning through different places, and sharing knowledge. She teaches masterclasses and leads hands-on workshops around the world. Her workshops focus on learning through making, experimenting with materials, and engaging with the local environment and its materials.

Her artistic and design practice is research-based and site-responsive, bringing together materials, people, and the environment. She is particularly interested in how we might create with nature in the future, rather than simply extracting from it – and how design can support material cycles, care, and new relationships between humans and the surrounding environment.

Project: Installations for the Non-Humans
Participants will learn how to create new materials from food waste and use them to make a small- scale sculptural installation inspired by and dedicated to nature. The aim is to move away from an anthropocentric approach to art and design and instead create for a so-called “non-human-centred” world, considering the needs of animals, birds, fungi, bacteria, and other living species as our equal companions.

The installations will be placed in an outdoor “gallery” or, where possible, in the school garden, where the works will become an environmental design. As the sculptures respond to weather conditions and eventually decompose into the soil, they will return nutrients and organic matter to the environment in which they were placed.

“Within this alignment, there is no room on Earth for unsustainable ways of living or for seeing living beings as a means of generating profit.” — Patricia Domínguez