Pauliina Mäkelä: Pneuma

Pauliina Mäkelä (b. 1980) works in the fields of illustration, visual art and live art. She is known for her magical, dream-like drawings executed in painstaking realistic detail. Her practice often combines experimental methods and analogue techniques.

The exhibition’s title, Pneuma, variably refers to ‘air in motion’, ‘breath’, ‘spirit’ or ‘soul’. For Pauliina Mäkelä, breath and moving air symbolize both the force that sustains life as well as the transience of all things.

The exhibition features drawings, textile works and overhead projector installations. The works containing storied and symbolic clues open up to the viewer by carefully examining them.

The exhibition draws our gaze to zones of human uncertainty and liminal emotional spaces. The featured works deal with the unpredictability and impermanence of life and the intermingling of inner and outer worlds. Acceptance of uncertainty can foster a reassuring feeling that life will somehow work itself out, often in unexpected ways.

Pauliina Mäkelä is based in Turku. She graduated from the Lahti Institute of Design in 2005. She was chosen as Finland’s Illustrator of the Year in 2021 and as the book cover category winner in the World Illustration Awards in 2023. She is a member of the HARMAA collective, which experiments with diverse forms of philosophical and artistic expression. Mäkelä is known to the wider public as the illustrator of volumes 1–6 of Paula Noronen’s Super Furball (Supermarsu) series of children’s books.

The exhibition has received a state grant from the Finnish Heritage Agency.