Lokal Creators / Inka Kivalo

We visited the studio of Finnish textile artist Inka Kivalo, who’s wonderful works have been shown at Lokal for years now.

She mainly works with jacquard weaving techniques to create painting-like wall tapestries that are windows into her colourful worlds. Her works are presented and available at Lokal.

Lokal Creators / Inka Kivalo

We visited the studio of Finnish textile artist Inka Kivalo, who’s wonderful works have been shown at Lokal for years now.

She mainly works with jacquard weaving techniques to create painting-like wall tapestries that are windows into her colourful worlds. Her works are presented and available at Lokal.

“I weave and embroider, and build sculptures. Sometimes I make scarves, and then at other times jewellery. But really my main works are tapestries.

The making sculptures, of animals and figures, is somehow liberating. They consist of very thin threads. I build and twine and compress and sculpt the strings, and in that way I create the shape. There’s a kind of childlike quality to these sculptures., and I want to preserve that. I reckon it’s fun somehow.

In making tapestries, the process begins with sketches. I make a large number of sketches. I have a sort of time of drafting. I build the warp, and then work after work I make. Weaving tapestries is rather slow. It’s tremendously important for me that the handwriting of my weave is alive. I mend the pieces and manipulate he surface throughout the weaving process. And often the solutions I make at the loom can be terribly complicated. In hindsight, I always wonder; how did I even make this part here?

It is important to me to see myself in a tapestry, and that comes from the trace of my hand. It comes from solutions in colours. The yarns are important. I build my own yarn from many thin threads because I want to make the surface vibrate in some way.”

Shop: Inka Kivalo’s Work

Explore: Lokal Creators

Lokal Creators / Armi Teva

Armi Teva is a visual artist and designer living in Helsinki. Teva operates in various fields, including sculpture, illustration and public art pieces. The works are united by a playful style, bold use of colours and a passion for drawing. Ceramics is one material close to Teva. She held an exhibition of ceramic reliefs on Lokal’s White Wall at the end of 2024, and we visited her studio as she was wrapping up the year.

Lokal Creators / Réka Király

Réka Király is a visual storyteller. Born in Budapest, Hungary, and she currently lives and works in Helsinki, Finland. Kiraly’s works capture the delicate individualism and uniqueness of people in the form of plants. These portraits are dialogues showing the emerging repetitive elements in nature. We visited her home studio in connection to her Lokal White Wall exhibition Seedling. 

Lokal Creators / Saija Starr

Saija Starr is a painter living in Helsinki. Recent works depict nature and human nature, memories and memories of places that have left a strong trace in memory. Starr’s painting style is expressive, and colours play a most important role.We visited her studio just as the last coat of paint was drying on her pieces to be included in her Lokal White Wall exhibition, Tranquility.

Lokal Creators / Akiko Mori

Akiko Mori was born in Japan and studied sculpture at Art University in Tokyo. In 2022 she opened her new studio in Helsinki, which we visited to mark her Lokal White Wall exhibition, Geometric Spaces. She is interested in how physical properties, such as clay density and water content, affect the fluidity of the clay.