Saara Ekström

Working with film, photography, text and site-specific installations, Saara Ekström explores liminality, temporality and the stratification of time and history, moving on the borderlands between the concrete and the allegorical, the past and the future. Messages scratched and burned on the walls of an abandoned prison. Ritual masks emerging from the depths of disappearing forests. Erupting volcanoes creating steaming passages to the underworld and our subconscious. Ekström searches for hidden realms, where myths, culture and nature, the sacred and profane meet.

Saara Ekström’s experimental and avantgarde films have been widely shown at international film festivals, and her art has been presented in numerous exhibitions at museums in Europe, America and Asia. She has been recognized among others with the Finnish State Art Prize in 2023, the Finnish media art AVEK award in 2018 and the Southern Finland Art Prize in 2017, as well as with nominations for Below Zero, Ars Fennica and Carnegie Art Awards.