Born in 1986, residing and working in Vaasa, Finland, Lana Haga is a multidisciplinary artist—working in sculpture, painting, and installation—best known for transforming post-industrial matter into new objects, marked by vivid colour and reflective surfaces. Three-dimensional paintings, text-paintings supported by unconventional surfaces, sculptures, and in-situ installations evoke analogies referring to existential struggles of the human condition but also the lingering effects of industrialisation and pollution, material displacement, climate change, and the luring existence of a world beyond our nature.
From a visual perspective, Lana Haga’s works are marked by both versatility and continuity as she continues reinventing her artistic practice, visualising and revisiting her message in new forms, processes, and disciplines. Materials like leather, steel, rubber, plastic, bitumen, paint, glass and textiles are combined and juxtaposed to create a constant interaction of opposites in terms of soft versus hard, matte versus reflective, organic versus artificial.
Her characteristic sculptures—think of Red Giant (Yellow) (2022) or Vastitas Borealis (2021)—are the result of a similar transformative practice, using acrylic and epoxy on post-industrial plastic to create her often stalactite-esque colourful sculptures. As an alchemist, she challenges the material attributes and transforms them. By doing so, Lana Haga contemplates the limitations, effects and possibilities of human material in(ter)vention. In Thousand Possibilities in a Thousand Possible Realities (2023) she opens up on cumulative and endless dimensions, where not only the organic clashes with the industrial but also with parallel realities in its mirror reflection, going beyond matter and opening up towards the idea of the multiverse.
In-situ installations such as Virgin Soil (2021) and anthropomorphic installations such as This Old Thing (2022), but also most recently in the form of text-paintings—think of If You Nothing To Say, Say Nothing (2023) and Living The Dream with One Eye Closed (2022)—are natural extensions of her serendipitous exploration of matter, dimensions, specific incentives, completing and reinventing her multidisciplinary artistic practice. By doing so, Lana Haga also explores intimate and personal concepts and socio-political issues, encompassing warfare, identity, personal responsibility, cancel culture and technological advancements.
With a background in digital storytelling and innovation—as she graduated from the Digital Creative Business School in Karlskrona, Sweden, in 2007—her artistic journey started in 2009 while residing in London, followed by a period of extensive travelling, nurturing, and developing her artist persona.
Notable institutional exhibitions include the solo presentation at the Kunsthalle Vaasa (2022), Finland, and participating in group shows at the Ostrobothnian Museum (2023) in Vaasa, Finland; the CICA Museum (2020) in Gimpo, South Korea; or at the Royal Academy of Arts (2015) in London, the United Kingdom. Haga has been awarded various grants courtesy of the Nygrén Foundation (2023), the Paulo Foundation (2022), the Arts Promotion Center Finland (2022), and the Swedish Cultural Foundation (2022). She has been exhibited and/or represented by various national and international art galleries, including Tsivrikos Shake Gallery in London, the United Kingdom; and Blond Contemporary Gallery in London, United Kingdom; and has participated in various international art fairs, such as the London Art Fair.
Written by Julien Delagrange, art historian, CAI Gallery Director
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