Young Artist of the Year 2024 - Suvi Sysi

Suvi Sysi (b. 1990 Nilsiä, Finland) is a visual artist living and working in Helsinki. She studied printmaking at the Academy of Fine Arts of Uniarts Helsinki and graduated with an MFA degree in 2020. The roots of her practice are in the printmaking methods and paper-based works. In addition to paper, Sysi’s materials include clay, wood and plaster. Often her works take the form of abstract installations.

Suvi Sysi describes paper as the most important material in her works: “It is exceptional in that, in my experience, no other material can reproduce colour so lightly and at the same time so intensively. Paper has a will. It is something that I can work with. Paper receives colour, moisture and treatment in different ways according to its nature. It also remembers how it has been treated.”

“What intrigues me about paper is its durability, its fragility and above all how it feels in one’s hands and on one’s fingertips. After expanding my work to become ever more material, I notice that I am looking for the feeling and affinity of paper in other materials that I use, like clay, wood and plaster.”

Over the years she has expanded her artistic creation in an ever more spatial and physical direction:
“I wanted to get away from the surface of the paper, and my works became ever more spatial. I began to think of the exhibition space as my sheet of paper, onto which various gestures (works) were placed.”

Suvi Sysi’s artworks are characterised by their materiality, their processual and research-based nature, and their sense of playfulness and wonder. The role of colour in her art is fundamental, in many cases being the actual subject rather than just one element of expression among others.