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, is borrowed from classical philosophy, variably meaning ‘air in motion’, ‘breath’, ‘spirit’ or ‘soul’. Mäkelä’s art is teeming with narrative and symbolic meanings that open up slowly, through careful study. The exhibition features a selection of her drawings, prints and overhead projections. Her myriad plants, body parts and ghostly apparitions convey meanings linked to the soul, the body, and the oneness of the world. Plants produce oxygen, which is consumed by the body, and the corporeal in turn morphs into the ghostly. Mäkelä presents worlds in which animate and inanimate elements are fused in an entrancing union.

The works in the exhibition invoke zones of uncertainty and liminal emotional spaces. Their mysterious atmosphere celebrates life’s imperfections, while leaving room for the viewer’s own interpretations. Acceptance of uncertainty can foster a feeling that life will work itself out – and that anything is possible.

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.