Anni Toivanen (b. 1993) is a painter and social anthropologist living in Helsinki. Moving between natural sciences, mythic imagination, and lived cultural memory, her paintings explore how different knowledge traditions shape the way humans understand the world. She is drawn to the mysteries of biological life and the vast processes that shape the universe, but just as strongly to the mythic explanations humans have created to understand those same phenomena.
Landscape is a recurring element her paintings, as places where the familiar slips into the surreal, where nature becomes slightly altered, symbolic, or dreamlike. She works with water soluble oils, watercolors, acrylics, pastel colors, and mixed media.