I remember getting to knew her work first via oversize art "zine", like A3 size publication "Mystic Sessions Vol. 1" back in 2006. Associating her with Kuti collective and liking what I have seen. I had also feeling she was somewhat into weird noise those years. Not sure how it is now, but at least she has done cover art for Lau Nau, who may not be exactly noise, but neat experimental sound at times. Also done cover/design for other experimental music artists.
Anyways, I was at local art museum not long time ago, and I was browsing through publications and out of a lot of uninteresting things, was shining this book called AER. I am not very good at people's names, so thinking "Pauliina Mäkelä"? Who? What? Why I don't have this book before? When I bought it and checked out more info, I realized that I have her earlier works, that were simply even 20 years earlier stuff. New material is highly more advanced.
She does performance art, design, installation, but most of all I like the pencil drawings. You can check out her works from the website. I suppose I may have option to check out some exhibitions eventually as there are bunch of them listed on the site. There seems to be coming solo exhibition even in Paris, but most of listed are in Finland.
Book wasn't cheap, probably even over prices in museum, was it 45 euro or something. You can get it for less than that from stores like:
https://www.sarjakuvakauppa.fi/aer.htmlhttps://sormieditions.bandcamp.com/merch/aerEven if Pauliina Mäkelä provides the visual side of the book, there is more. "The book presents a diverse selection of Pauliina Mäkelä's pencil drawings, installations and animated images from 2020–2024, and includes writings related to aer/pneuma theme written by philosophers Joonas S. Martikainen, Irina Poleshchuk, Erika Ruonakoski and Jaakko Vuori."
All text is both in Finnish and English.
QuotePauliina Mäkelä, a visual artist based in Turku, Finland, working mainly with drawing and analogue installation art. My work often deals with the unpredictable, the uncertain and the impermanent, taking inspiration from both inanimate and animate nature.
My multidisciplinary work is based on pencil drawing. Making things by hand and experimenting with different analogue methods are essential to my practice. With combining various artistic methods I look for a specific tuning, an atmosphere that breathes the complexity of the world: the coexistence of beauty and horror, playfulness and gravity, ordinariness and mystery, the embodied and the intangible, how it all intertwines.
As an artist, I am interested in what lies beyond words: sensations, tensions, the not-knowing, the spaces in-between. My work contains narrative fragments and symbolic clues that are best revealed to the viewer slowly, through exploration.
https://pauliinamakela.com
