Eeva-Liisa Puhakka works in mediums that include kinetic sculpture, video, installation and environmental art. Puhakka is a member of Scent Club Berlin, a collective of artists, designers and scientists working in and between scents and smells and these fields of practice. The group focuses on scent and olfaction as an expressive medium for experimentation in art, science and technology. A specific focus in her recent work has been the investigation of human and animal dependence: the synanthropic species, together with global environmental changes on bird populations and bird migration in correlation to human migration.
The nature of her art is usually site-specific and she work with the space. She puts the viewer in the middle of the installation, so to create the work through direct experience and the experience transmits through images, sound, objects, moving or inactive objects and even smells. By applying a poetic language she absorb the storytelling art in her art practice.
Many of themes in her works approaches memory and time from divers angles using methods such as storytelling, the sense of smell and imprints of history in architecture. Themes encountered include objective/subjective history, rural flight, personal and family history, nature and animal. She addresses memory and time from diverse angles using the sense of smell and imprints of history in architecture and landscape. She have recently been researching a religious sect and its child preachers, that affected my home town in southern Finland during the 1930s-1950s.
Eeva-Liisa Puhakka graduated with an MFA in New Media art from Valand School of Fine Arts, University of Gothenburg (2009) and an MSc in Environmental Engineering from Helsinki University of Technology (2001). She lives and works in Berlin, Germany and Kouvola, Finland. Puhakka’s works have been widely presented in exhibitions across Europe, including Transmediale Vorspiele Berlin (2017), KW Berlin, WRO Media Art Festival (2015), VIA/EXIT media art festivals (2016), Ostrale Dresden, Piksel Norway, Cairo Video Festival, Galleri Box Göteborg (2016), Liebig12 Berlin, Titanik gallery Turku (2014) and Huuto gallery Helsinki (2014). In 2017 she exhibited solo with Kleiner Salon, Berlin and was shortlisted for Below Zero, London. Puhakka’s works regularly in a curatorial/production role and projects have included Nordic Environmental Art and Science Symposium, Helsinki (2017), Landscape-Metropolis exhibition, Berlin (2015) and Ars Lieke media art exhibition, Kouvola Art Museum, Finland (2014). Her most recent project Deliver Us From Evil, was curated for Antares Art Center, Finland (2018).