Katja Tukiainen: Pink thinking

Finnish artist Katja Tukiainen is unashamedly altruistic, creating works that depict adventurous girls brimming with positivity.

The many shades of pink have been the colour of choice for contemporary artist Katja Tukiainen for more than 20 years. Where many would simply see the favourite colour of girls everywhere, Tukiainen sees a myriad of charged meanings. “I adopted pink for my art after returning to Finland from the Venetian Academy of Fine Arts. As an artist, colour is hugely important, and I didn’t want to be limited by the traditional oil painting colour scheme,” Tukiainen says. “I see pink as a political colour, too. There are so many variations of pink that I don’t think I could ever tire of it!”

The recurring theme in Tukiainen’s works is girls. The roots of GIRL GANG go back to putting together ragdolls with her grandmother as a child. At first, the girl as a motif was a way to perceive that there are no limits to being female. As student and professional artist, the theme of femininity expanded to cover other people and the world as a whole. “I quickly noticed that my girls really spoke to people. Viewers understand that they become more than just representatives of their own gender: men too, can see themselves in them.”

Tukiainen works intuitively, based on her own personality and the values with which she grew up. She enjoys basing her art on historical paintings: a GIRL is not a four-letter word is an adaptation of Rubens’ The Rape of the Daughters of Leucippus. In Fusion, a group exhibition at the Nordic Watercolour Museum in Skärhamn, Sweden, she collaborates on a mural in an exciting new way with Icelandic colleague Sigga Björg Sigurðardottir. Whatever the medium, for Tukiainen, art is “my mother tongue and way of existing.”

Where to see Katja Tukiainen’s art:
Fusion - a group show at the Nordic Watercolour Museum, Skärhamn, Sweden, until 30 September.

GIRL GANG - A series of unique ceramic sculptures at Arabia Art Department Society and Iittala & Arabia Design Centre in Helsinki, Finland, from 30 August.

Solo exhibition at Makasiini Contemporary, Turku, Finland, 23 November 2018 – 6 January 2019.

Web: katjatukiainen.com

Instagram: @katja.tukiainen