Timo Jokela is sculptor, environmental artist and professor in art education.
I am interested in the relationship between nature and human being. I approach the topic using the methods of site-specific art, which is usually environmental and community art. With my artworks connected to landscapes, winter, snow, ice, and natural materials and processes, I strive to bring new perspectives to the recent discussion about the relationship between art and location, as well as art and northern peoples.
I want to detach myself from the Western tradition of landscape art, which has often conquered, oppressed and even colonised the north. Aside from pursuing my own art, I act as a curator in exhibitions and events and principal investigator in development projects between art and science.
I see my art, which combines research and education, as a type of northern visual ethnography. I use this method to bring out cultural, social and sometimes even political strata and linkages in the north and the Arctic. Landscapes, snow and ice installations as well as environmental and community-based works of art convey traces of the eco-social cultures in locations in Finnish Lapland, Northern Norway, North-West Russia, Siberia, and wherever else I am working.
