In summer 2023, I went to Finland to exhibit my works. I stayed at Mujala artist residency in Reila. Overwhelmed by new experiences, I dreamt almost every night. Bizarre, vivid dreams approached me and became obsessive images in the head. I decided to recreate them by unfolding natural mysteries and wandering around the forests.
“Finnish Dreams” is a series about the relationship between the human and nature, the impact of the war on the artist, and the relationship with the body as a universal planetary form.
Trees wrapped in silk-like webs created by caterpillars in a Finnish forest, summer 2024
Trees wrapped in silk-like webs created by caterpillars in a Finnish forest, summer 2024
When I first came to the shore to take pictures, I understood that I wanted to interact with nature in the closest way possible. I slowly got down to the foamy waterside of the Baltic Sea, putting all the body weight on the stones. I felt like an alien that tries to blend into the landscape, and slowly turns into a seaweed. My ears were underwater, and all I could hear were water flows. I spent hours walking in the water and lying on the stones.
I lie on a stone in the Baltic Sea, as if the water remembers me from a dream, 2024
Sea foam collects along the shore in Finland, 2024
The forested area and the sea resembled parts of the human organism, carefully covered with greenery and various organisms. The desire to blend in with the landscape did not subside, so I decided to create a mask that would resemble a birch tree.
I collected stones near the shore and started to put pieces of local newspapers on them with layers of glue. After some time, the structure became heavy and was covered with moss and black and white acrylic stripes. I took the stones back, and one day I went to take a picture of myself in the mask.
Wearing a birch-inspired mask, I stand among the dense undergrowth of a Finnish forest, blending into the landscape with moss, stone, and paint, 2024
I often dream of shadows and silhouettes—fluid, shifting presences that blur the line between human and spirit. Inspired by these visions, I began experimenting with exposure, creating dreamlike photographs of figures dancing and drifting through natural spaces. These images are not portraits, but traces of encounters — fragmented, fleeting, and unreal — like the dreams themselves.
A silhouette stands before a projected video game screen, 2024
Two silhouettes dance at a Finnish wedding, 2024
I had a dream about a creature with horns—horns it chose to chop off itself. After waking, I wove a horned crown out of dry branches and went to the forest. There, I found a tree stump with an axe embedded in it. The image came to me instantly.
I bent down, took the axe in my hands, and imagined cutting the horns from my own head.
Wearing a crown of dry branches, I reach for an axe beside a stump, reenacting a dream of a creature cutting off its own horns, 2024
I hold the horns I imagined cutting from my own head, 2024
During my travels to the shore, I found empty cartridge cases in the water. It turned out the military once used the area for training. Flaked pieces of metal hardly resembled the danger they carried years before.
I often dream of war—of being trapped in war zones—because I come from a country still at war. These fragments in the landscape felt like echoes of something deeply familiar, something I continue to carry in sleep.
An empty cartridge lies in the water near a former military training site in Finland, 2024