MAIRE KARUVUORI Is an artist, a performer, a wanderer growing her roots, a wonderer finding her truths. Easily excited about all kinds of new things and experiments. Especially experimental ones. Her ideals are: Carefulness and carelessness. Minimalism, as in the basics: courage, wisdom and enlightenment. Love, truth and equity. Her thoughts on art and society: She’s an artist for telling stories, transmitting ideas and interaction. She believes art allows you to touch important subjects with sensitivity and ease and she’d love the public to actually like spending time with her art. That’s the only true way to make a positive impact through a performance. It’s easy for an artist to take part in political discussions or even debates. The rules are less rigid but the comments just as valid and heard. A lot can also be said without words. The most common way to make a point often differs from the best one. Art, as it’s best, is a lot more than meets the eye. This is what she aims for. What she actually does She works and lives in Iniö, on a small island in the baltic sea, west from Turku, Finland. She’s a performance artist by day (and often nights too), but she also teaches and writes about art, life or anything really. She follows politics, tendencies and trends on various different scales and actively seeks to do her own bit in making the world a better place. She likes to take part in important conversations regarding for example art, society, the environment, reality tv or the taste of apples this year, but she also makes an effort to do concrete stuff, like help her neighbors on the farm, talk to strangers in street corners and found nature reserves. A lot of her time goes to thinking. That’s the essence of most art work really. The hardest part is to find the right questions, then eventually the answers and gradually the way to approach it all. After those steps it gets much easier. The rest is often surprising and never linear but at least it’s usually tangible. She often makes live performances of some kind, video or audio work and writings. On rare occasions she makes actual objects too as her background is in handicrafts, artisan hat making and clothing design, but lately she’s been mostly playing with words and ideas. She sometimes gets published somewhere and occasionally even invited to places, but the day to day work is mostly her trying strange stuff at home or in the garden, making conference calls by the shore where the reception is better or taking her laptop to the tiny village library to write. One of the biggest challenges in her artistic practice right now is how to have an international art career while reducing the carbon footprint of her work. This is what she investigates parallel to the thematics that are important to her: Equality, equity, sustainability, patience, courage, love and empathy. She works best with others She’s a playful soul who loves to work with other people. For her collaborations are about real sharing, exchange and a joint, positive impact on all parties and the outcome. Of course she can also just “get the job done” (for the right amount of money) but it’s hugely more gratifying to build meaningful encounters and a purpose for collaborations. She’s interested in virtually everything, she gets easily excited and loves to learn from her fellow humans! She aims for a feminist and low carbon practise where she tries to work in the most sustainable way that she can. She thinks about sustainability towards the planet and her surroundings but also in relation to working conditions and the longevity of life as an artist.