Elina Ojakangas is a Swedish-Finnish painter, and graduate of Gerleborgsskolan School of Fine Art in Stockholm. Her thought-provoking portrayals are emotive personifications exploring her own inferences regarding identity and its entanglement with melancholy. Transforming memories and feelings into warped, circular scenes, Elina’s works are autobiographical, where human form is reimagined through the lens of her own emotional experiences.

Approaching her work with meticulous intention (as opposed to experimentally) lends her expressive figures to a surrealistic genre where subjects are analysed and reconstructed.  Described as “uniquely weird, angular and well-executed” by gallery Director Terri Lew, Elina’s dramatic work yields to and contrasts with the underlying dysthymia her work seeks to express.

The artist states, “(in this series) I take the role of an observer, bearing witness to events from my own memory. I examine these moments of profound intimacy. When all the layers of expected behavior vanish, revealing the human clarity of what lies beneath.”

Elina Ojakangas is an emerging oil painter who has exhibited in group shows in Sweden and debuts internationally at 19 Karen Contemporary Artspace.

Education

2021-2023 Gerleborg School of Fine Art, Stockholm, Sweden

Occupation

2012-2022 Tattoo artist

Group Exhibitions

2023    Fearless art gallery Umea

2023    Gallery Grip Stockholm

2023    Fearless art gallery, Stockholm

2022    Gallery Killgissa, Stockholm

2021    Molndal museum, Molndal