My art practice is like notes played out of order. Much like jazz, there is beauty in the chaos and the perfection in the imperfection...
Kia Eriksson is a Vancouver based artist. She was born and raised in Helsinki, Finland. She is a part of Finland’s minority group called “finlandssvensk,” a minority that has Swedish as their mother tongue. A big part of her inspiration drives from her childhood, and the idea of play, with her main medium being sculpture.
Kia received her BFA from Kwantlen Polytechnic University in 2021.
Louis Carroll’s heroic character, Alice said, “if I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense.” Leaning into this irrationality, my art practice is a form of ritual and play, where reality and imagination collide. This allows me to explore dualities of tension and tranquility, allure and ugliness, the ordinary and extraordinary.
I am captivated by domestic and industrial materials – their mundane, inexpensive, and manufactured essence. Even when labeled as disposable, these materials can be reborn and transformed, emerging as something otherworldly. These anti-heroic forms are made in obvious ways, without mystery, allowing them to exist in authentic and awkward conditions. Their meaning resides in their rawness and vulnerability. They stay in a continuous flux of appearing both finished and under development.
The process behind the work is revealed through the traces of the body lingering behind in the materials. Evidence of past touch – drilling, wrapping, knotting, and tearing material – uncovers the anxieties left behind. Similar to a performance, this process embraces accidents and chance, without being exact or precise. My “deskilling” approach speaks to approximation – I work quickly, without an established technique, seeking immediate solutions. Like Alice, my art seems child-like – ambiguous while free from limitations.
Education:
2021 Bachelor of Fine Arts, BFA, Kwantlen Polytechnic University (KPU), Surrey BC
Group Exhibitions:
2021 Taking Flight, Deer Lake Gallery, Burnaby BC
2021 17/21 KPU Graduation Exhibition, Online, Surrey BC
2020 4300 Exhibition, Spruce Gallery, Surrey BC
2020 Thinking Through Abstraction, Spruce Gallery, Surrey BC
2020 Uncanny, Spruce Gallery, Surrey BC
2020 Cross-Pollination, Spruce Gallery, Surrey BC
2019 Your Surrey: City as Subject, Spruce Gallery, Surrey BC
2019 IGNITE! Visual Art Gallery, Clutch Theatre, Vancouver BC
2018 KPU Award Exhibition, River Rock Casino, Richmond BC
Awards:
2020 Linda Schwartz Endowed Award, KPU
2020 Jason Singh Endowed Memorial Award, KPU
2020 Maureen and George Basil Award, KPU
2019 Jason Singh Endowed Memorial Award, KPU
2019 Lily Norris Endowed Award for Visual Arts, KPU
2018 Lily Norris Endowed Award for Visual Arts, KPU
Relevant Experience:
2021 Curator, Deer Lake Gallery, Burnaby, BC
2021 Artist Talk, CARFAC In the Studio and Beyond, Online
2019 Gallery Assistant, Inukshuk Gallery, Granville Island, BC
2019 Exhibition Catalogue Student Assistant, KPU, Surrey BC
2019 Co-Curator, Coming Together, Arbutus Gallery, KPU, Surrey BC
