Marja Kolu

► Marja Kolu (b. 1956) creates installations using found objects from her daily surroundings. Reinventing the readymade, she follows in the footsteps of the Dadaists, Surrealists and Fluxus artists. Her work delivers a social commentary flavoured with a dash of absurdity and dark humour. Kolu began creating installations using materials from demolished wooden houses in Kuopio that “simply begged” for a second life. Kolu’s art is characterized by its special relationship with space and interactive engagement of audiences.

Recycling is trendy these days, by the reuse of discarded materials has been self-evident to Kolu her entire career. Every object in her 2021 retrospective at Lapua Art Museum, Everything Vanishes into White, has been recycled many times. This time she painted them white, rendering them invisible. This gesture was her way of granting the objects – and her own ideas – exoneration, oblivion, and resurrection.