The artist couple Raisa Raekallio and Misha del Val are based in Sirkka, a village of 890 inhabitants in Kittilä, near the Levi fell. They have been painting and living together there for the past 10 years.
What is unusual about Raisa and Misha’s practise is that they paint together on the same canvas. Their works are intimate genre paintings familiar from art history, depicting people’s everyday lives, pastimes, gatherings and celebrations.
The northern landscapes and domestic interiors have an ambiance of magical realism. An eccentric group of people has gathered in a familiar habitat. Events and different time layers intertwine. The atmosphere is dreamlike and mysterious.
Milieu refers to the environment in which something is taking place. It is a grounded experience in a complex nomadic world; comfortably inhabiting a milieu, while acknowledging that it consists of a web of other milieus and territories.
Raisa and Misha’s milieu is a home of creativity – an unsettled haven of something improbable yet imaginable.
In 2023, Raisa Raekallio and Misha del Val were awarded the Finnish Artists’ Association’s Visual Artist Prize.
The exhibition has received funding from the Finnish Heritage Agency.
More information
Curator
Niina Tanskanen
niina.tanskanen@avan.fi
040 585 4499
