Emilia Nurmivaara (FI) 2025, "The Open Window" oil on canvas, 160 x 126 cm

EMILIA NURMIVAARA
Born 1992, Vantaa, Finland
Lives and works in Kokkola, Finland

As an artist, Emilia Nurmivaara examines and develops the way she observes and experiences her surroundings. Through her paintings, she examines the value of physical objects in a home and the significance they have for our soul space and the creation of dreams. To Emilia Nurmivaara the home is an intimate place where the interiors are loaded with memories, thoughts, and atmospheres which she tries to capture in her paintings by documenting her childhood home.

The Poetics of Space, a book written in 1958 by the French philosopher Gaston Bachelard has been an important source of inspiration in Emilia’s artistic practice. In the book, Bachelard applies poetry, philosophy, and phenomenology to describe the influence of houses, spaces, and interiors on our metaphysical life and the creation of dreams. In this context, Bachelard highlights the childhood home as particularly influential for our dream world, which is also one of the central themes in Emilia’s work.

Emilia Nurmivaara’s paintings are based on the visible world with everyday motifs from the interiors of her childhood home. The childhood home gives us the first experience of a home and is the place where we first dream and bring our imagination to life. To breathe life into the portrayed interiors, Emilia uses elements of reflection from glass surfaces that turn her paintings into a visual play. Emilia creates an illusion of a room trying to solve the problem between figurative and abstract imagery in a physical space. The image is built as a collaboration between reality and fantasy. She finds it visually interesting how the different reflections distort reality and give the paintings dreamlike imagery. The space will become new.

With her paintings, Emilia invites the viewer to turn the presented interiors into their own spaces.

Artist Statement, Kokkola 2023