Miia Rinne, Mirka Raito & Niina Lehtonen Braun

You're a Big Girl Now

5.1.–28.1.2025

You're a Big Girl Now

I drew a lot as a child. I remember the moment when I realised I couldn’t create a satisfying picture of my
experience of being in the world: no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t draw an image that would include both
the present world in front of my eyes and the one observing it—the ‘me’ of everything that was behind my eyes
but still equally present: my memories, my dreams, my fears, my fantasies.

I don’t remember how old I was at the time, but that moment has stayed with me because it gave me the first
hint that I would later become an artist. For a while, I realised my inability to describe my experience of being in
the world, and the disappointment made it clear that I had to try anyway. I knew I could not survive the
madness—the beauty and horror of life—without at least attempting to portray it.

Since then, I have moved from images into words of my own expression. Niina Lehtonen Braun, Mirka Raito,
and Miia Rinne use painting, collage, moving image, and installation as their mediums. The aim is the same:
it is an attempt to make visible and thus share even a fragment of the never-ending process of being and
becoming human.

It is about how to live on the border between inner and outer worlds; within all ages from childhood to old age,
amidst the endless, forward flow of time; the meaningful and meaningless details striving for consciousness; to
live with dreams and memories, amidst other people’s hopes and desires, amidst one’s own hopes and desires; to
persist through constant convergence and divergence, overlappings and layerings, compulsions and desires for
freedom, incompletenesses, and fumblings.

Their view of humanity is that of the woman. I recognise this too: the constant change, the weight of the body
and its fluids, the conflict between external demands and internal compulsion, and the strange joy of the
continuum of life.

Ida Pimenoff
Helsinki, 12.12.2024