Katriina Rosavaara
Katriina Rosavaara works through installation, combining museum and archive materials, text and visual elements in site-specific contexts. Rosavaara is interested in the memory of space, place and people, in forgotten perspectives, in the dark side of history, and in issues and themes that have often been left out of official historiography. Diverse minorized communities, queers, mental health patients, refugees, transgenerational traumas, the aftermath of wars and the various attempts to record, process and highlight these lesser known stories through contemporary art can be seen as the common thread running through Rosavaara's work.
Over two decades of work, Rosavaara has developed an original way of working, based on borrowing, adding and writing, in which works and ensembles based on extensive background research are often composed almost entirely from existing materials. A critical approach to visual art materials from an environmental perspective, and the resulting desire to use as few new materials as possible, places the re-thinking of subjects rather than new objects at the heart of her work.