Mia Hamari is an artist of the north. She was born in Oulu and spent her youth in Simo, the southernmost municipality of the province of Lapland. She studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki and graduated with an MA in Art in 2004. She is also a printmaker and painter, but she is best known as a sculptor. After her graduation, Hamari returned to her home region. She has a house on the banks of the River Simojoki, with a studio in a building in the yard. A terrace right beside the river serves as a workspace in summer. Life in the north beside the water means for her above all spiritual freedom and, together with her family, the quality of life offered by an environment that is close to nature. She says: The nature around me has an influence both on my mood and the works that I am making. I sculpt outside, and according to the season. The sun, the wind, the rain and the frost all leave their own marks on the wood. The light in summer and the lack of it during the time of darkness in midwinter sway my thoughts. The ideas for my works come from my dreams, the life I have lived and my subconscious.

As a sculptor – or sculptress, as Hamari calls herself – she uses wood as her main material. The forms of her slightly surrealist, expressive sculptures are identifiable as figures of women, children or animals or as metamorphoses of humans and animals. Hamari’s method of working is highly individual. She often attaches various other natural materials such as bone, leather, bristles, hairs and bark as well as metals, glass and old utensils to her wood sculptures. In this way, she weaves together the past and the present, fact and fiction. Hamari deals with the relationships between humanity and nature, memory, fantasy and reality in her works. The broad emotional spectrum of narrative and dreamlike subjects extends from the playful to the scary.

Mia Hamari has seven works in the Layers exhibition: Home (2015), Baby (2016), Valeriana (2021), Memento Mori (2006–22), and Lightening, Whelp, and Old Rain, all of which were produced this year.

Artwork: Mia Hamari, Old Rain, 2025
Photo of artwork: Vesa Aaltonen