Miia Kettunen (Finland)

BIO//

Miia is a multidisciplinary visual artist (MA) whose practice focuses on working with environmental and community-related art. She has worked extensively with different communities, honing her skills as an artist in dialogue with the public. Her work is fueled by the consideration of ecological issues and the intention of generating unconventional dialogic paths with the public innately merging into my works. Through her works, she often studies initiations, intermediations, and interconnections — as a result, her artistic techniques are subject to transformation. Recently, she has focused on making observations of interconnective dialogues between humans and nature by combining art and science in her practice. In current works, she explores the use of components from environmental art, bioart, alternative photography techniques, and media arts.

PROJECT//

The residency will be an important initiation of the long-term project Land Portraits focusing on the connection between humans and land, and on exploring the proactive attitude and actions towards the local environment.

In Narva, Miia will invite local scientists and members of the community to participate in the project. The collaboration with a local biologist and a geologist gives vital information about the environment and guides in choosing the locations of the portraits together with the participants. She will implement light practices with participants, with a focus on the emotional and sensory connection with the land. She will lead the participants to strengthen their sense of land with the help of non-rational perception directing the attention to the presence of being with the land. The practice ends with a self-portrait taken by the participant with the help of a self-timer, resulting in an image conveying the non-verbal connection.

She will print the portraits with cyanotype on fabric, which will be framed and installed in the chosen outdoor locations in Narva. After the residency, Miia aims to have the land portraits installed in different locations around the world.