Ananya Tanttu is a Helsinki-based visual artist currently studying for a MFA in time and space arts at the Academy of Fine Arts (University of the Arts Helsinki). She graduated with a BA from the Lahti Institute of Design in 2020. Her practice, into which she weaves text and elements of installation, is primarily lens-based. Since 2013, Tanttu’s works have been exhibited in several solo and group exhibitions in Finland and abroad, and her works can be found in both private and public collections.

Her process is an attempt to befriend the simultaneity of duality and oneness, the primary relationship between human and land, as well as questions around the metaphysics and supposed sacredness of the photograph. Through constructing altar shelves and imaginary shrines, she addresses the ritual function of images, and thus also our bodily interaction with those images. As a result of a fragmented childhood and cultural identity, recurring questions in her work revolve around serendipity, destiny and divination practices. A yearning for an element of the sublime in her immediate reality is portrayed through a subjective symbolism, thus creating a playful mythology of sorts.

ananyalinneatanttu(at)gmail.com

@ananyatanttu