Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

In her artistic practice, Niina Villanueva explores internal spaces and intersecting worlds shaped by her interest in art history, science, nature, poetry, and materials. In recent years, she has worked periodically in Italy and Germany, where the legacy of ancient Rome and various historical contexts have had a profound impact on her work. In her paintings and ceramic works, everything exists in a state of constant transformation. Enigmatic, abstracted human and animal figures merge with lush floral and arboreal forms that inhabit shadowy, liminal spaces. The figures are fluid—often elongated, fragmented, or dissolving. They merge, embrace, and intertwine as if breathing in a shared rhythm. Forms hover on the threshold of recognition: a butterfly becomes a skull, rib bones become a root system, a nautilus, or an intestine.

The intuitive gesture is the foundation of Villanueva’s practice. She works with oil and raw pigment on canvas, seeking to merge the ethereality of color field painting with the numinous symbolism of surrealist imagery. Stains in bodily and earthy hues create a hazy ground from which forms begin to rise, often in richer, more saturated tones. Her compositions gesture toward symmetry yet ultimately resist it, as she aims to create a delicate equilibrium. The spaces she depicts are often womb-like —cavernous and aqueous. They evoke layered emotions tied to the fundamental relationships between parent and child, nature and being: melancholic, tender, and vital.

Niina Villanueva is a Master of Fine Arts graduate from the Academy of Fine Arts at the University of the Arts Helsinki. She has participated in numerous exhibitions in Finland and held a solo exhibition in Berlin. She has received the William Thuring Award from the Finnish Art Society, and her works are included in several notable collections, such as the Saastamoinen Foundation, EMMA – Espoo Museum of Modern Art, the Finnish National Gallery, and the HUS Art Collection.

Villanueva is currently working on a solo exhibition opening in January 2026 at Makasiini Contemporary in Helsinki.