Utställning SKÅPET, Irina Laaja - Push Through

The CABINET at Busstorget shows the exhibition PUSH THROUGH by Irina Laaja.

The work is made of only recycled material. Irinia generally strives to use mostly recycled, organic or otherwise environmentally friendly materials and methods.

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION
The complexity and significance of the body fascinates me; how something so concrete and obvious is also so complicated and difficult. How views of, and definitions of, sexuality, normality and obscenity are interwoven, between and through our physical and subconscious. I mainly work with mixed media sculpture and textiles, often with techniques and methods that are otherwise associated with crafts and pattern construction.

The CABINET's shape and position led me to fantasize about what continues behind and beyond it. A body? An abstract form? A place? In my imagination, the exhibition space became another window, and an encounter with this living, changing something that grows, moves and wants to push through.

ABOUT THE ARTIST
Irina Laaja, born in 1989, originally comes from Vaasa, Finland. She received her master's degree in Free Art from Umeå Academy of Art in 2020 and her work has been shown at group exhibitions both in Sweden and internationally, as well as at solo exhibitions such as ReTramp Gallery Berlin (2017), Galleri Majkens Stockholm (2018), RYMD Gallery Reykjavik (2019), Galleri Alva Umeå (2022) etc. She has been awarded scholarships and awards including the Royal Academy of Arts (2020), first prize winner of the New Emergence Art Unity Award (2020) and more. Irina currently lives and works in Umeå, Sweden.