Maija Laurinen

Ghost pipes (Monotropa uniflora), 2025

The work is a site-specific installation that uses low-frequency sounds to create a sense of an intangible presence in the space. Something vibrates beneath your feet, throughout the space and your body. The title of the work refers to forest ecology and underground networks between plants.

Ghost pipes (Lat. Monotropa uniflora) are plants that lack chlorophyll and live exceptionally in the dark without the energy produced by photosynthesis. Instead, they obtain their nutrients from trees through fungal mycelia in the soil. The existence of Monotropa was long a biological mystery, but they have helped to prove the invisible transfer of substances between plants via fungal pathways. The impact of vast mycorrhizal networks in the soil extends to all terrestrial ecosystems, including us.

The small Monotropa are one manifestation of everything that happens beyond the reach of human perception but has a decisive impact on our existence. Laurinen's installation physically examines the experience of something that can be felt but not seen, noticed but not perceived, something that cannot be grasped even though it is strongly present and interconnected with everything that exists.

Maija Laurinen is a visual artist who lives and works in Nurmes. Laurinen earned her doctorate in art at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava in 2019. She works in a multidisciplinary way, exploring boundaries of the imperceptible and creating changing situations that encourage us to consider what we observe in a way differing from our everyday perceptions.