Origami is the art of turning a plain sheet of paper into practically any shape. The transformation of a piece of paper into virtually anything made me think of how we as humans tend to turn plain facts and life situations into positive or negative ones when we react to them emotionally.

In this series, origamis represent emotions that can sometimes be overwhelming, drive you in some direction, make you act a certain way. You can’t fight them. If you try, you will fail. So many of us have unresolved emotions from our childhood that drag us down and turn into miserable human beings. You can only be at peace with yourself when you acknowledge these emotions, observe them, let them be, and pass through you.

Psychologists argue that a human being’s character and personality are largely the results of things that happened to him/her in the course of life. Some life situations leave a deep emotional impact on us, which stays with us for years and often goes into the subconscious. We take on an emotion, usually a negative one (fear, regret, anger), and carry it with us further, not even realizing that we have it. Yet, it does affect our behavior, perceptions, thoughts, views of the world, and even health. It’s never just one experience that influences us. It’s always the combination, the layers, which with time turn into so-called “emotional baggage” burdening us. At some point, this baggage can make us feel stuck completely when we feel depressed, enormously stressed, or deeply unhappy and not being able to understand why we think the way we think and why we do the way we do.

Psychologists say that if you have a memory that’s more than 18 months old and that causes an extreme emotional reaction in your mind, it means that this past event is holding you back from living your life fully. Often, getting back to those painful past events, digging them from your memory and experiencing them once again in your mind, accepting them, and transforming your initial emotional reaction to them is the only way to go on living. This project reflects the process of accumulating emotional baggage and getting rid of it in the end, becoming better and wiser. Cause there’s more to life than the past. Yet, a butterfly has to be a caterpillar first

What makes you change your mood in seconds? Not so many things in life have this power, but music does. Music creates an atmosphere. It has the power to deepen or even transform our visual experiences. It speaks directly to our emotions and can change them in seconds.

Music is even more powerful when we observe its effect on the imagination. Music builds imagination and creativity. When we see pictures - our imagination does not get stronger, however, when we close our eyes and hear a sound, our imagination can go wild and create all sorts of things.

This project is an attempt to imagine music in visuals, a take on what is going on in a musician’s and listener’s minds and souls while a melody is played and heard. Each image is inspired by a particular music piece and reflects the photographer’s emotions while listening to it.

Whenever you feel lost or disconnected from the world when it gets tough navigating all of the changes in your life, a single green leaf can help you to get back home and grounded again. Plants can be a powerful form of healing for uncertain times. Their roots mean they are quite literally ‘grounded’ into the earth, and turning them to medicine puts us in touch with systems far outside ourselves. Plants remind us we are always part of something bigger and that we are not alone.

This collection is made up of works created in collaboration with several talented florists: Tina Habarova, Saija Sitolahti, and Elina Bostrom.

Every story is made up. All the stories that we hear about the world, the way things work in it and what our place in it is have been made up for us by our parents, school, society. However, when we realize that everything has been made up, now it’s our turn to tell ourselves a new story. And this story can be anything we ever wanted it to be. It won’t be easy. But it’s possible to forget all the stories that were bringing us down, and create our own, the one that will empower us - from scratch. But to do that, we need to cut the old stories first.

Finding your place in life is never easy. There are so many ways to choose from. Should you be normal and simply fit in? Or should you search for your own path, no matter how hard and bumpy it might be? This is the story about growing up and searching for a home. A story about choosing between simply following directions and doing your own thing. A story about sisterhood and supporting each other along the journey.

All of us experience an inner dialogue. We have a mental image of ourselves that we are talking to almost every moment of our life and about anything: hopes, troubles, Sunday shopping, memories from the past, what the person standing next to us thinks about us. Every person’s identity is split into two parts “me” and “myself”. The project is exploring the interactions of these two different sides of the same person and the idea of the duality of a human mind and self-discovery.

These parts don’t represent “good” and “evil” in the general sense of those words. Often, one of these parts is our inner critic, the punisher, the one that comes up with all the fears, excuses, and negative thoughts. This “me” can make us fail at anything since this voice will never be happy, it thrives on suffering, recreating it in our heads over and over again, often without any connection to a real-life situation we are in. It’s the job of the other part, “myself”, to recognize the negative delusion and turn it into healthy positive thoughts thus bringing peace to our minds.

Escapism - the tendency to seek distraction and relief from unpleasant realities, especially by seeking entertainment or engaging in fantasy. The word "escapism" often carries a negative connotation, suggesting that escapists are unhappy, with an inability or unwillingness to connect with the real world and to take necessary action. However, recent psychological studies show that often escapism becomes "self-expansion”, meaning that diving deeply into an activity or creating a fantasy can be a way of exploring oneself and finding inner peace.

The series shows young women, whose fantasies and passions spilled into the real world. It’s a speculation on how one can find comfort and confidence in doing something he/she loves.

The project is inspired by the idea of dæmons, introduced in Philipp Pullman's trilogy His Dark Materials. Dæmons are the external physical manifestation of a person's 'inner-self' that takes the form of an animal. In Pulmann’s book, during adolescence a person's dæmon undergoes "settling", an event in which that person's dæmon permanently and involuntarily assumes the form of the animal which the person most resembles in character. In plain words, a dæmon is a part of you, your soul, which follows you everywhere in a physical form of an animal and other people can see it and immediately recognize what kind of a person you really are and what personality traits you have.

The project is a collaboration with two illustrators, who draw “imaginary” dæmons for my “real life” characters. The works included in the project attempt to show the half real, half-imaginary world, where the main character, though split in two is always interacting with it’s “inner-self”, establishing the connection and attempting to be in harmony with it as if they were one.

Early on in our lives stuffed animals play a key role in our emotional development. When we were children, they were our loyal companions who never betrayed us. When it was comforting we needed, they were there for us, and accepted every emotion that we threw at them. They listened to our secrets, and never told anyone.

As adults, we may crave a similar kind of love – a love that is unconditional. But the more we grow, the more difficult it is to get it from the outside.

Sometimes, we have to be our own stuffed animals, and accept ourselves the way we are. When we do, life is nothing short of magic. These pieces grasp the magical encounters with our [imaginary] stuffed animals.

A collection of works not connected by a certain theme, but by a certain visual coherence.

Artworks working well as a diptych

Artworks working well as a diptych

Our instinct to blend in is part of our default setting. Animals use their ability to take up different colors so that they’ll be safe from the predators lurking around them. We may feel compelled to do the same, when we’re in a social setting. By taking up the colors of our environment, we become invisible, and safe from the gaze of others. This way, we feel safe from judgment. But once we get more comfortable, we show our true colors, and that’s when things start to get fun.

Every one of us has things that we don’t like about ourselves. It may be a personality trait or a body part that we feel is in the way of our happiness. And we may think that by correcting them we will find a way out. However, there’s always the one step that we sometimes miss. We need to accept those things first. With each gesture of acceptance, we take a step closer to ourselves, and incidentally to others. It’s the flaws that make us real, and by facing them we become authentic individuals with authentic souls.

Artworks working well as a diptych

Artworks in black & white tones not belonging to any particular project

A collection of works not connected by a certain theme, but by a certain visual coherence.

Artworks working well as a diptych