After the Colour

The colour has detached from the image and spread into the surrounding space – into the cylinder, onto the music stand, and onto found objects. Its connection to the original image does not happen instantly, but unfolds over time, through delay and transformation.

My works are made by returning to the landscapes shown in the images. The process involves walking, collecting, and tracing. Colours are found directly in the landscape, for example in the detached elastic of a swimming cap, the fabric of an umbrella, or in the shades of plants. The colours discovered are linked to the depainted images, like a footnote.

The small publication Removed – ed. 11 revisits the landscape of the ancient Agora, where the colours have faded and only the outlines remain. The faded hues of the buildings and the whiteness of the sculptures have shaped our perception of ancient ideals of beauty, even though the original colours conveyed status and hierarchy. While the colours are absent from the images, they are rediscovered in space through the works.

– Mia Seppälä

Mia Seppälä is a Finnish multidisciplinary visual artist, researcher, and teacher working with photography, printmaking, painting, performance, and moving image. Her works often explore the in-betweenness of analog and digital imagery, where established and emerging phenomena and materials interact. In recent years, her public projects and works have been exhibited in a non-profit art space in a shopping centre in East Helsinki (2019–2022), at the Finnish Museum of Photography (2022), the Jyväskylä Art Museum (2023), and at the Mannerheim Museum and the Gallen-Kallela Museum (2024). Seppälä is currently completing her doctoral studies at the Academy of Fine Arts, University of the Arts Helsinki, where she received her MFA in 2017.

The exhibition has received a state grant from the Finnish Heritage Agency.