MIMOSA PALE
Mimosa Pale is a finnish sculptor and performance artist working with community- based art projects and interdisciplinary performance.
Recurring themes in her work include community, embodiment, and the human relationship with the environment.
Pale is known for works that combine sculpture and performance, as well as for community art projects that emphasize participation and collective creation. Since 2024, she has served as the Artistic Director of Haihatus Art Centre. She has realized numerous performances, exhibitions, and community art projects both in Finland and internationally. Currently, she works as a community artist in Joutsa with support
from the Finnish Cultural Foundation, developing a multicultural and integrative model of community art.
WORKS
Current projects
- Luova tila Joutsa – Creative community art space in Joutsa run by Mimosa Pale and volunteering art professionals. Programme includes creative workshops in visual art, music and body work, culture salongs, book clubs. Luova tila on facebook
- Kukkiva kylä – Community garden in Joutsa that is open all year round with action days and festivities. Managed by Haihatus Art Centre, funded by Keski-Suomen Liitto and Joutsa municipality. Kukkiva kylä on Facebook
- Haihatus Art Center – Exhibition space, venue and artist residency run by a non profit art association Haihatuksen Henki ry. Haihatus Art Center
ABOUT
Mimosa Pale Biography by Nadja Sayej / 2019
“Turn it upside down and it looks great.” —Mimosa Pale
Mimosa Pale is a Finnish artist and musician born in 1980 who grew up in Pori, Finland. As a teenager, she studied action painting in Salzburg, which kickstarted her passion for performance art. She continued to study art at the University of Central England in Birmingham, the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris and graduated with a Master’s in Fine Art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki, with a focus on sculpture. Today, she bridges sculpture and performance art in comical, yet unexpected ways.
Primarily inspired by carnivals, masquerade, side shows and jazz, Pale arms the silly with the spectacular; and brings a playful approach to otherwise ordinary materials. Her approach is what she calls “a social approach to art,” in that she believes art is for everyone, with a focus on bridging disciplines.
Pale moved to Berlin in 2008, where she ran her own “poor man’s haute couture” hat shop called Himo, in the district of Neukölln. It became a hub of concerts, exhibitions and performances. Over the following years, Pale became known as a leading figure in the city’s underground art movement, where she created performances that have combined millinery with recycling used materials and audience-as-performer in what she calls “street life performance.”
Using materials that move, like fringes, is at the heart of her playful artworks. She made a piece entitled Wandering Shocks, where a group of performers wearing costumes made of rainbow-hued fringes performed at the Berlin Circus Festival in 2017, while for another, she has adhered plastic fringes to a public monument for Blow, which she blew with a leaf blower as part of the Streetlevel Festival in Helsinki in 2015.
As a musician, Pale performs with the musical saw, a handsaw that is played with a bow, which she incorporates into her performances. Between the years of 2008 and 2015, she collaborated with the “Electric Sideshow,” a variety show in Berlin. As a musician, she has also collaborated with bands like Emma Award-winning jazz band Dalindeo and Finnish dance orchestra, Vallilan Tango.
The artist has a to break tradition by showing outside of traditional art gallery, stage and theatre venues. “My work has some theatrical elements, but they are used rather in contrast to other surrounding elements and expectations,” says Pale.
In 2018, she created an artwork called Foliage, a reflecting coat (made of reflective materials) that was part of a larger installation with her art collective Wild Angelicas; Maria Duncker, Anne Hiekkaranta and Niina Lehtonen Braun, which included a fountain and backdrop for poetry performances in Berlin.
In 2019, Pale performed “How to Become a Diamond” at Opean 6, Einstein Kultur in Munich. While onstage with a life-sized, skeletal diamond sculpture, she performed onstage under a set of rotating colored lights.
Pale lives and works in Berlin, Germany
Nadja Sayej / 2019
CONTACT
mimosapale(ät)gmail.com
mimosa(ät)haihatus.fi