Ulla-Mari Lindström

Soundscapes from the word, 2025
Restrooms at the Kuopio Music Center and Art Museum

The work is constructed from the sounds of everyday life and the environment: the hum of nature, the chatter in a café, the sound of diving, the ringing of church bells, and many other moments that transport the listener to different landscapes and atmospheres. The sounds overlap and run parallel, bringing out both recognizable and unexpected tones.

The listener encounters sounds unexpectedly – flashes of situations that one would not normally pay attention to. The artwork examines the relationship between sound and space and how everyday sounds change when heard elsewhere, in a different moment. At the same time, it asks how sounds shape our experience of space and presence. Familiar and unfamiliar sounds can open up landscapes and memories, evoke mental images that have never been truly experienced, but which emerge vividly and concretely when listened to.

Äänikuvia maailmalta are set in three different environments. In the Kuopio Music Center, sounds spread simultaneously throughout the building's lobby and public restroom, creating a shared yet multidimensional experience – an open space where the work lives in interaction with the environment. In the art museum, the artwork can be heard at the restroom, where the listening experience becomes intimate: the listener is alone with the sounds, free from outside noise.

Ulla-Mari Lindström is a photography and media artist living in Kuopio, whose working methods move between photography, video, painting, and installations made from natural materials. Her works often draw from small everyday events, coincidences and experiments, which through work open up new connections and meanings between things.

Lindström has studied art in Amsterdam and Helsinki. She has worked and collected material in several countries - including the Arcapacha residency in Colombia, the Philippines and Bali - and the soundscapes of these places have become part of her work.