Photo By Lena Aframova
Suvi Karjalainen (b. 1996) is a Finnish artist and educator working across painting, printmaking, and installation. The core of her work is formed by The Scroll, a 10 centimetre high, 95 metre long work on paper begun in 2017. As the work remains ongoing, a long life could see The Scroll reaching a kilometre.
Suvi’s work is interested in artefacts and in how man-made objects contain not only their material properties, but also the memory of the hands that touched them and the cultural contexts of those who made them. The Scroll is also understood as an artefact: an attempt to capture, clarify, and search for pattern within the chaos of lived experience.
The work has been shown at the Old American Can Factory in New York City, Galeri Kertas in Indonesia, and most recently at a 200-year-old temple on Honshu, Japan. Suvi earned her BFA from Parsons School of Design with the support of a merit-based scholarship and has participated in international residencies in Finland, Latvia, Japan, and Indonesia. She is a recipient of the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation grant.