Engl.
One Shore and Seven Seas
”The theme of the sea has followed me for a long time. After finishing primary school, the idea of becoming a sailor intrigued me. Although my path shifted, I still find myself returning to the sea again and again, now through my works.
In my exhibition, the seashore has faded and shifted to the background. Pigment has been removed from the images, and the landscape has lightened precisely where it should be visible. Beneath these faded shores, stored in airtight cylinders, are old nautical charts and materials collected from the shoreline. The cylinders serve as footnotes to the works, hinting at another level, another time.
Nautical charts are still relevant, even though their form has changed. They no longer rustle in the hands as paper sheets but now exist in digital form. Navigation is done through satellites, precisely and efficiently. Still, there is something in old charts that doesn’t translate into the digital version. They tell of a world where direction was sought through physical markers, celestial bodies, and where the unknown awaited beyond the horizon.
Today, nautical charts are increasingly marked with boundaries: buffer zones, firing ranges, forbidden shores. They depict a world where the sea is no longer just a place of freedom and adventure, but also a controlled and restricted area. The charts stored in the cylinders remind us of this change. They convey how the open landscape has transformed into a regulated and closed one.
But even though the routes have changed, and the charts are encapsulated, the sea still exists. It remains the starting point and the destination. Perhaps adventure has not disappeared. Perhaps it now simply follows a different path.”
Bio:
Mia Seppälä is a multidisciplinary visual artist working with photography, printmaking, painting, performance, and moving images. Her works often explore common and established cultural practices that come to a crossing course with phenomena, materials, or ideas that evoke conflicting emotions. Recent exhibitions of her work have been seen at the Finnish Museum of Photography in 2022, Kuopio Art Museum in 2023, and the Gallen-Kallela Museum in 2024. Seppälä is completing her doctoral studies at the Academy of Fine Arts, University of the Arts Helsinki, where she earned her Master’s degree in Fine Arts in 2017.
