Irina Laaja (born 1989, Vasa, Finland) mainly works with textile and mixed media sculpture but also photography, video and performance.The body is often present and its complexity and significance fascinates her; how something so concrete and obvious is also so complicated and difficult. How views on, and definitions of, sexuality, normality and obscenity are woven through our physics and subconscious.
Her practice is both conceptual and confessional with a strong focus on the process, the body and the experiences that stem from it. The choice of material plays a big role from an environmental perspective as well as from her attraction to the limitations and challenges of working with recycled materials.
She is interested in the emotional and intellectual history of the objects. She collects materials that she disassembles and reassemble in order to find and understand the final solution of the form. Similarly she takes the body apart, sort out the parts and go through them one by one. Bending, turning and repeating into new entities.