Siiri Haarla

Siiri Haarla (b. 1986) lives and works in Helsinki and Berlin.

Haarla frequently engages with themes of vision, colour, embodiment, and the formation of selfhood. Through painting, she seeks to understand humanity’s place in the world, raising social and ethical questions along the way. As she notes, “My paintings are a kind of pictorial essay, an attempt to conceptualise and articulate something that had no recognisable form before my attempt to capture it.”

Haarla’s works typically centre on a single figure through which she explores both personal experience and broader reflections on the human condition. This recurring figure often appears as an angel, an observing eye, or a character resembling the artist herself. Haarla regards the angel as a metaphor for painting – both arrive as moments of revelation.

Haarla is currently completing a doctoral thesis on seeing and colour as the language of painting.

Exhibition Freshly Painted 14.5.–30.8.2026

Siiri Haarla

Set against a pale pink background is a landscape-like scene shaped like a vaulted arch, featuring two nude figures: an angel on the left and a combination of a woman and a bird on the right. At the bottom of the image are five stumps oozing red liquid. The angel figure holds a knife in its left hand.

Heart of a Hunter, 2026. Oil on canvas, 170 x 150 cm. Image: Jussi Tiainen.