3.10.2025

Artist Meeting: Liisa-Irmelen Liwata

Liisa-Irmelen Liwata, artist in the Still I Rise exhibition, will talk about her works at the Vintti exhibition space on Friday, October 3, from 5:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m.

Liisa-Irmelen Liwata, working with ceramics as a canvas, creates layered surfaces that echo the intermingling of cultures and experiences. Her tactile works evoke a sense of the body as a living map, marked by ancestral connections and the land one inhabits. In Seinäjoki Kunsthalle’s exhibition Liisa-Irmelen Liwata’s work turns inward and skyward. Rooted in the concept of napa—the Finnish word for “belly button”—her practice explores the navel as both physical origin and central point of orientation. This duality becomes a metaphorical compass, guiding an exploration of cultural identity, bodily memory, and belonging. Through symbolic instruments of navigation—compasses, celestial charts, and “belly button stars”—Liwata constructs a personal cartography. Her work traces constellations in the Finnish and Congolese sky, mapping parallel cosmic landscapes that reflect her own hybridity.

The exhibition weaves together two practices rooted in resilience, ancestral memory, and the ever-evolving act of self-definition. Their works navigate the emotional and political terrain of survival, where defiant hope, tactile materiality, and deeply personal mythologies converge. As their practices intersect, viewers are drawn into a dynamic space: one of witnessing, reflection, and quiet rebellion.

The exhibition deals with survival. Viewers are invited to pause and reflect on questions concerning psychological resilience, the inheritance of ancestral knowledge, and changes in identity. What is the political and spiritual environment in which we strive to survive? The artists’ intersecting working methods create a space that encourages viewers to reflect. Change is sought through quiet rebellion. More about the exhibition HERE.

The artist meeting will be held on the Kunsthalle’s free admission day as part of Kalevan Navetta’s Afterwork Art program. Welcome!

Artist meeting is part of the Afterwork Art Event. Take a look at the Seinäjoki African Community program also in Kalevan Navetta during Afterwork Art.

 

Liisa-Irmelen Liwata

Liisa-Irmelen Liwata is a Finnish-Congolese visual artist based in Helsinki, Finland. Liwata uses sculpture and writing to explore the relationship people have with the land from nationalistic and geographical perspectives. Her pieces feature lyricism between the body, the land and language and the liminal nature of being.

She works mostly with ceramics using a painterly technique, creating images on clay surfaces by pressing and sliding different coloured clays. The method is a combination of printmaking, collage work and finger painting.

Liwata has graduated from the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts in 2024. She has a BA degree from Aalto University School of Art, Design, and Architecture in 2019 with studies also at Design Academy Eindhoven in the Netherlands. Her latest group exhibitions include the MFA degree show “Kuvan Kevät” at the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts (2024), “Perceive sea, dunes, mountains in move” in 198 CAL Gallery, London (2023) and “Solar Noon” at Taattisten Tila (2023).