Artist
Maija Annikki Savolainen
Maija Annikki Savolainen (Finland, 1980)is a visual artist working with photography and installation. She gained her Master of Arts in Photography from Aalto University in 2014. With a background in studying biology, her work tend to combine natural science and art in a distinctive way. Sunlight and photographic gestures are significant themes in her practices.
Her works have been on exhibition widely in Finland and abroad. Her photobook won the Nordic Dummy Award 2013 –and was published by Kehrer Verlag with a title When the Sense of Belonging is Bound to a System of Movement in 2014. In 2014 Savolainen was a nominee of Fotofinlandia prize. She is also a founder of Maanantai-collective.
She is an artist who is not only interested in photographic work, but also the installations and the space are additional elements that enrich her projects. Her approaches are conceived from various perspectives through the handling of different objects and languages and works from photographic concepts by themselves, such the light, but she extrapolates it into a more abstract proposals, that why it makes her so interesting for us.
Matter of light
Through photography light and time acquire a material form. The observed light is manipulated, translated and stored from one material and language to another – from almost immaterial being into a tangible photographic object. The series of photographs, Matter of light, visualise the gesture of photography: an attempt to touch and feel light.