Alma Heikkilä

flashing decaying wood blurs the line between life in the soil and above it and imagines life inside a decaying trunk, the most important habitat in the forest ecosystem and a hotspot for many different species, like fungi, bacteria and insects. As humans, we are unable to visit the inside of a tree trunk to see what processes are taking place there. Imagining and creating visuals of these important life cycles makes scientific findings more tangible and relatable. Life in decaying tree trunks becomes exciting and there is a lot of overwhelming beauty to be imagined and found.

Alma Heikkilä (b. 1984) lives and works in Helsinki. She is a founding member of Mustarinda, a multidisciplinary collective located in the oldgrowth forests of northern Finland, that hosts residencies at the intersection between art and ecology. Heikkilä is fascinated by the collective activities of soil creatures, from nematodes to fungi, spores to mycelium. Finding form in sculpture and large-scale painting, she strives to create a space for humans to imagine an up-close encounter or experience with the invisible processes that occur in the soil, often at the microscopic level.