About

Anu Raatikainen is a visual artist living in Helsinki, Finland, working with light, painting, drawing, sculpture, video, animation, 3D and performance. Light has served as a unifying theme and material in her work, and she also has had a chance to work with light art through curation and association activities.

Anu graduated from Finnish Academy of Fine Arts with a Master´s Degree in December 2017 and has participated in solo and group exhibitions in Finland, Sweden, Japan and Italy. She has been working on the Phototaxis project for the past two years. The aim of the project was to create a body of work to be performed in nature, with the central theme of light. The project reached out to nature through recent light pollution research, AR technology, as well as myths, prehistoric and astronomical influences. Before that her last solo exhibitions were held at Oksasenkatu 11 in Helsinki, Vaasa art Hall in Vaasa and at MUU Gallery in Helsinki.

In addition to her own artistic practice Anu has acted as a curator in Material Light group exhibition, organized in collaboration with MUU Artist Association, Finnish Light Art Society FLASH and Northern Photographic centre in 2021-2022. Anu has also been part of FLASH´s board in 2018-2022.

Light has interested me as both material and metaphor since the beginning of my art studies. Among the many qualities of light, I am especially fascinated by its affective power—its instinctual pull on us. For me light appears almost alive, as if having its own presence. Perhaps this attraction is in our nature; for most of history, we were creatures of daylight, moved by the rhythms of the sun. And compared, I find artificial light uncanny —it mimics the sun yet lacks its life-giving essence.

I have combined light with, among other things, sculpture and painting in the form of steel sculptures and light-transparent, layered drawings. My steel sculptures are an attempt to shape something organic from industrial materials, that combine the challenges of our era – industry, energy, nature, otherness. My works create their own strange world, located between the familiar and the alien, the natural and the uncanny, the past and the future, where light is the unifying, animating force of the works.

My work often begins as visions from the subconscious, evolving through an inner dialogue with deeper psyche and refinement by conscious study and exploration. I get inspiration from diverse influences, including natural sciences, technology, art history and archaic forms of expression, archetypes, depth psychology, occulture and esoterisism as well as science fiction. I ´m interested in our relationship to nature, other species, emerging technologies, and especially the depths, processes and hidden potentials of the human psyche. I explore these themes in the intersection of the rational and the subconscious, the cognitive and the intuitive, the ancient and the futuristic—blending them in a playful, animistic dialogue. This unprejudiced approach to combining techniques, materials, and paradigms arises from a sincere search for new synergies and for something perennial that runs through them all.

Collaborations have also become an important enriching and educational element in my work. Collaborations are invaluable to me, as I feel that working with others expands the expertise and vision of both parties, and as a way of working, represents a way of being that seeks connections and synergies.

CV

Contact: anraana (a) gmail.com

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