Mona Piste: DNA / Nina Korvenoja: Tahmeaa ja makeaa

Mona Piste (b.1985) is a Finnish visual artist with roots in Kainuu and Palestine. In her exhibition, the artist explores the heritage of two different cultures and her war-evacuated families through visual means. The exhibition is dominated by abstract, conceptual installation works. In her work, the artist makes extensive use of materials and artisan techniques inherited from her ancestors, such as net weaving and the Palestinian cross-stitch technique, tatreez. By combining traditions with her own experience, the artist creates a unified cultural image that is drawn from two seemingly different cultures and that reflects them internally.

Nina Korvenoja (b.1990) lives and works in Helsinki. In her expressive watercolor paintings, the queer body is a natural part of wild natural spaces, where biodiversity flourishes freely and vibrantly. Flowers and bees are playful references to symbols of sexual education, but on the other hand, endangered pollinators and plants communicate the loss of nature and the importance of biodiversity. Wild herbs and mushrooms bring layers of healing, ancestral knowledge, invisible communication and symbiosis to the works.