Professor Satu Miettinen, a service design expert and dean, along with textile professor Heidi Pietarinen and docent Melanie Sarantou, will be featured as the September artists at the Faculty of Arts in Galleria Lovisa. The exhibition titled “150 Years of Ecofeminist Art” will be displayed on the gallery’s walls, located next to Coffee Shop Lovisa, throughout September. We welcome you to come and explore!

Satu Miettinen, who is 50 years old, presents a photo series titled “Summer Fades in the Microscope,” completed in 2022. This series was captured using an iPhone 12 Pro combined with a microscope lens, showcasing the details of familiar plants and the insects that inhabit them, including heather, bees, bumblebees, blueberries, and sedges. Photographing with a microscope lens requires patience and careful manual adjustments. Capturing a bumblebee is a matter of foresight, as the microscope focuses randomly during walks. The photographs reflect a hazy summer colour palette, highlighting the valuable details of the home landscape as integral parts of the natural ecosystem.

Heidi Pietarinen, also 50 years old (as of Runeberg’s Day), created jacquard fabrics titled “Two Hundred Chickens” and “Mirror Image,” completed between 2019 and 2022. The motifs and colours of these textiles are inspired by the textiles in her grandparents’ home. Her grandparents twice sought refuge in evacuation centres from the village of Nieminen in the rural municipality of Sortavala. The colours, shapes, textures, rhythms, and scales of the woven patterns represent just one aspect of the layered and double-sided fabrics. Although only one creator’s name is attached, the artistic process involves multiple contributors. The multiple layers of colour, material, and interconnected narratives create a collage of shared authorship that celebrates cultural diversity. In this work, Pietarinen emphasises the importance of material-oriented design as a living design tool, promoting collective creativity.

Melanie Sarantou, also 50, explores the performative aspects of textiles in her work. Her 2022 series titled “Roots Quilting” features three-dimensional felted textiles, where shapes and surfaces are quilted together through the growth of organic materials’ roots.

150 Years of Ecofeminist Art Gallery Lovisa 1.–30.9.2022