Born 1979 in Oulu Finland. Lives and works in Nuorgam, Finland.
The tension between nature and culture represents the ambivalence in Elina Länsman’s works. Inherited from philosophic and artistic tradition, she is enriched from her journeys, from her reflexions, from her fascination for the far North and indigenous cultures.
Elina pictures a mysterious and tumultuous river between two opposite banks. On one side the call of nature, on the other the impossibility to merge into it without the loss of what makes us human: our self-consciousness and our thoughts. Mysterious is our identity and the world around us. Such mystery represents an unstable and sometimes painful harmony.
From the metaphysical loneliness to the physical loneliness, here is where a sensitive consciousness arises. Between the coldness and hardness of a rock, the warmth of a home, and the wild landscapes where silence is thick and almost mineral. An inside and an outside, combining themselves, answering each other, opposing one another. Elina Länsman’s work is driven by these conflicing relations, like an intimate wound, seeking reconciliation.
Far from political issues, from global distress, from style, stars and artistic «coups», there is much to learn about her creations. To find out the meaning, to rediscover the silence and the intimate mystery which we are made up of and surrounded by. Romanticism looses its lyricism but not its power. Against the tyranny of reason and theory, against the victory of technique and progress, Elina Länsman’s work helps us take a deep breath and invites us to a spiritual and persistently comtemplative journey.
Sébastien Toda, Diploma in Philosophy
