MIA MAKELA ART+SCI+ECO+HISTORY
Mia Makela is a Finnish media artist and cultural historian, whose work explores intersections between art and other disciplines: technology, science, ecology. She is a researcher-artist whose production is based on a deep need to understand and take into account the non-human world.
Makela uses expert knowledge and empirical research as part of her media artworks. In her artistic process, she has turned into an algae hunter, a zookeeper, a bird watcher, a beekeeper. She challenges us to see the limitations of human senses and to look at the world in a larger continuum.
Makela exhibits chosen themes in the forms of video, installations, audio guides, expeditions, participatory acts and related publications. Makela, internationally acknowledged pioneer in the field of live cinema, has shown her work and lectured all over the globe.
Her latest activities include BEEINGS, a 3D -animation installation where she presents an imaginary orchid observed from the perspective of a tiny flying creature such as a bee. Looking for Mr. Blue, a virtual bird watching saga tracing the cultural history of a goose. History of an Impossible Destiny, a 4-channel video installation, for which she spent 3 years documenting beekeeping around Europe and doing research on the destiny of the honey bee. Zootopia audio guide for zoos, a posthumanist and feminist re-imagining of other species. Artistic expeditions in Patagonia and Chiloe Island in Chile in search for creating practical framework for her human-animal studies. Green Matters – video handbook for algae gatherers - an exploration in the world of green algae and traditional weaving in order to save the Baltic Sea.
During 2023-24 she worked as a coordinator of European Media Art Platform (EMAP) residency at M-Cult, Helsinki.
CONTACT
Photo: Hilja Mustonen
ARTIST STATEMENT
I see art as a means of re-sensing the world — a tool to recalibrate my attention, to listen more deeply.
As an artist and cultural historian, my work exists at the intersection of art, science, ecology, and technology. Through empirical exploration and expert knowledge, I seek to challenge the limits of human perception and invite a broader, more inclusive way of relating to life around us.
Rooted in live cinema—a field I helped pioneer internationally—and expanding into ecological activism and critical animal studies, my practice serves both as a method of inquiry and an invitation to reimagine coexistence. In the process I often step into new roles—algae gatherer, zookeeper, bird watcher, beekeeper—allowing embodied research to guide the creative process. Through these immersive experiences, I seek to bridge sensory and epistemic gaps between species, illuminating the vast continuums of life that exist alongside us, yet often remain unseen, whether by the limits of human perception or by industrial and political structures.
I work across diverse media, from video installations, documentary and 3D animation to audio guides, participatory expeditions, and publications. My work often embodies a speculative lens, as seen in BEEINGS, where I depict an orchid through the perspective of a tiny flying creature, and Looking for Mr. Blue, a virtual bird-watching saga exploring the cultural history of a goose. Whether reimagining the zoo through a posthumanist lens in Zootopia, makeing textiles out of algae as a gesture toward the healing of the Baltic Sea in Green Matters or documenting the precarious destiny of honeybees across Europe in History of an Impossible Destiny, my works aim to shift perspectives and foster empathy beyond species boundaries.