Kirpilä Studio: Sandra Kantanen

Kirpilä Studio is a curated online gallery. Artists invited to participate in the project are encouraged to engage with Juhani Kirpilä’s unique art collection and the atmospheric environment of the museum—exploring the space both through its architecture and curated collection, as well as its history as a private residence.

The first artist featured in Kirpilä Studio is photographer Sandra Kantanen (b. 1974), who created a collage-like triptych titled Ikkuna (Window) during spring 2025. In Kantanen’s work, the private home and public museum, art and nature, past and present enter into a new kind of dialogue.

Kantanen’s practice delicately weaves together photography, painting, and digital techniques. Her works inhabit the borderlands between dream and reality, exploring landscape both as an inner experience and as an aesthetic form. In her new series, Kantanen approached Juhani Kirpilä’s collection in a poetic and deeply personal way, layering elements of home, landscape, and memory. She describes her working process as follows:

 “The three-part series Ikkuna (Window) explores Juhani Kirpilä, his home, and his love for art. As a visual artist, I’m inspired by the idea that there are people who find happiness through art. I’ve created excerpts – or windows – into the world beyond, surrounding them with fragments gathered from the collector’s home. They form a kind of altar to art, or a collector’s view. Carpets take flight, and the outlines of houseplants bring nature indoors. I’ve taken liberties with the collection works: altered them to my liking, removed and added elements. I hope the late artists don’t take offense!”

Sandra Kantanen’s work was recently exhibited at Saatchi Gallery in London as part of the group exhibition Flowers – Flora in Contemporary Art & Culture, and is on view until August 24 as part of Blur / Obscure / Distort: Photography and Perception at the Norton Museum of Art in Florida. Discover more about Sandra Kantanen here.