Finland

Juliana Hyrri is an Estonian-born visual artist, painter, cartoonist and illustrator whose work explores the intersection of language and expression. After studying Fine Arts in Helsinki her works has been included in several finish contemporary art museum’s collections. In 2023, she was honoured with the State Award by The National Council for Multidisciplinary Art, recognizing her impactful contributions to the Finnish contemporary comics and illustration scene.

Marika Maijala works across writing, illustration, visual arts and animation. She currently works in the Artists’ House on Harakka Island, Helsinki, and studies painting at Free Art School Helsinki. Her artistic practice draws from play, experiment, trial and error in the spirit of DIY. Marika’s main creative sources are the realm of narration, that she used to love as a child, as well as her relationships with other living and non-living creatures. Her versatile body of work includes picture books, art books, paintings, drawings, texts, animations, videos, installations and illustrations for public spaces.

Emmi Valve is a comic artist and illustrator, she loves eating and cooking, and her favorite food is Eastern European dumplings, pelmenis (she even got the tattoo of one). She is also into taxidermy and likes to make wearable items from dead animals. She wore a headpiece made out of a dead parrot for her wedding and has jars full of animal parts everywhere in her kitchen. She has a great sense of humor, born out of growing up in her massive, multi-problematic family, and likes to present characters in her comics she would like to read about but are sadly absent from most of published comics.

Raisa Raekallio from Kittilä, Finland, and Misha del Val from Bilbao, Basque Country are a Lapland-based artist couple. Raisa studied fine arts in Finland and Misha in the Basque Country and Australia. They are working in collaboration on paintings, drawings, performance art pieces, ceramics, curatorial projects, and podcasts since 2013.