Raisa Raekallio & Misha del Val

'This morning, through the narrow opening of our kitchen window, we saw, walking pass our backyard, someone who had left everything behind. They didn’t know their name (although they made up one in the spot to satisfy our immodest curiosity). They couldn’t really tell whether they were a man, or a woman, or a girl, or a boy, or anything in between, or anything beyond. They didn’t seem to recall belonging to any Homeland, nor having any other direction than gently moving forward; their steps leaving a graceful trace on the snow. They kept walking silently, looking pleasantly at the open sky, carrying nothing in their pockets, softly breathing in the crispy morning air, until they got lost in the distance.'

Raisa Raekallio (Kittilä, Finland) and Misha del Val (Bilbao, Basque Country, Spain) are a Lapland-based artist couple working in collaboration in paintings, drawings, ceramics, comic-strips and performance art pieces. Raekallio and del Val started their working collaboration in 2013 following an uncannily similar sensitivity for art, films and music; a devotion for the forest; and a deplorable sense of humor.

Raekallio's and del Val's current on-going series of large-format oil paintings in collaboration 'Apátridas' [literally without Motherland] (2019-20) are populated by a bunch of strange characters -something cosmic and clowny in them- of whom even the artists know very little. The identity of these beings (nationality, gender, social status…) appears to have collapsed. They seem to move adrift, carrying a broken past, an uncertain future, and a brave, robust heart. Maybe these characters emanate a disquieting otherness, but also a distant affinity. They belong to no Kingdom. Some of them have found, in glittering space blankets, the warmth and shelter we all long for. Are these personages destitute refugees in need, impudent fellows putting on a show or truly spiritually awakened beings?

'Apátridas' project is supported by Arts Promotion Centre Finland, Lapland Arts Council and Bilbaoarte Foundation. The project will be in exhibition during 2020 at tm-galleria (Helsinki), Torre de Ariz, Basauri (Bilbao) and as part of 'Artist of the Month' at Korundi Art Museum (Rovaniemi).

Above: Raisa Raekallio & Misha del Val, Untitled, oil on linen, 145 x 170 cm. 2019
Raisa Raekallio & Misha del Val, Untitled, oil on linen, 172 x 148 cm. 2019 outside the artists' studio in Sirkka.
Raisa Raekallio & Misha del Val 'Captain Painting and Space Refugees in Space Blankets' oil on linen, 145 x 170 cm. 2019

UPCOMING

tm-galleria, Helsinki, Finland
8 Jul - 2 Aug 2020

Torre de Ariz, Basauri (Bilbao), Spain
28 Feb - 29 Mar 2020

Korundi Art Museum, Rovaniemi, Finland
Artists' Association of Lapland - Artist of the Month
Sep 2020