Katja Tukiainen
Visual artist and painter, Katja Tukiainen was born in 1969 in Pori, Finland. She started to draw and paint autofictional girls during her teenage years. Tukiainen has combined experimental comics and narrative painting since the beginning of her artistic expression, and her shakedown of the tradition was enthusiastic and even avantgardistic in the Finnish field of visual art of 1990’s.
“When I was a young GIRL people asked when shall I stop painting with pink. Now I am an old GIRL.” – Katja Tukiainen
In the mid of 1990s Katja studied painting at the Venice Academy of Fine Arts (Accademia di Belle Arti di Venezia), graduated in 1996 with the Master of Arts from the University of Art and Design Helsinki, and year 2009 with Master of Fine Arts from Academy of Fine Arts Helsinki, where she continued directly to the doctorate of fine arts and defended her artistic doctoral thesis called The Girl Army –Narrative painting in space in the spring of 2022. Tukiainen has held several solo exhibitions, participated in numerous group exhibitions and published artist’s monographs and comic books in Finland and abroad. Her exhibitions and painting installations have been exhibited in both galleries and museums. Her works are included in several public and private art collections.
“With my paintings, sculptures and installations I lead the audience to the world where cute and minor creatures have an opinion and the power. When I am reading daily news I cannot always believe in goodness, but in the world of my art good wins bad 6-0. People say my works are provocative and they speak out, but still they are sensitive. It is more than ok to say that,” Tukiainen says.
