Outi Martikainen

Textile artist Outi Martikainen sees her artistic practice as working in between art and design. Her textile artworks are typically composed handmade with traditional textile techniques but with unconventional and recycled materials. At the moment, Martikainen is interested in making textile structures a more substancial part of an artwork. She has recently been studying digital jacquard weaving to combine new materials with digital images.

In her creative process Martikainen explores how size and materials effect the ambiance and character of her artwork by enlarging the imagery or the motif into a large scale textile surface. Her pieces form two-dimensional textures that take shape as the viewer’s distance to the works grows. Viewed close up, the works seem like structural abstractions but from further away they emerge as landscapes or other recognizable motif. By exploring new materials and combining them to different traditional textile techniques Martikainen creates an inherently diverse style of expression.

Apart from her independent artistic work, Martikainen has worked as a designer in several architectural projects, where her input has varied from integrated textile artwork to designing patterns. Martikainen was FCINY’s artist-in-residence in May 2011.

www.outi.in