Simi Ruotsalainen

B. 1981, Rovaniemi, Northern Finland

Simi Ruotsalainen (they/them) is media-artist, photographer, comic-artist and independent filmmaker from Rovaniemi, Finland. 

Ruotsalainen graduated in 2020 as Master of Arts from The department of Media from University of Lapland. They now study to be the Doctor of Arts and write their doctoral thesis about art activism.

Ruotsalainen’s artworks are often in the form of moving image, animation and video, but behind the obvious there are wide selection of mediums used from traditional film photography to painting and text. Words as structure, visual building blocks or simply as image have lately played major role in Ruotsalainen’s art.

Ruotsalainen builds their artworks layer by layer, and whatever medium they use, they are only tools to deliver the message. Ruotsalainen considers their art as a subtle form of activism by participating to the conversation at hand. The reoccuring themes in their work are related in Northern and Arctic life, environmental issues, gender and equality. North as a ”base camp” or the way of thinking and living is always the key element in Ruotsalainen’s artworks. Whatever they do, they do it northward bound.