1984-

Jaana Maijala’s starting point as an artist are her drawings. Not aimed at the representation of objects in a conventional sense, they are to be understood rather as immediate expressions of a current, experienced reality. The drawing paper, covered completely with pencil hatches, and described by the artist as “filled” with “traces”, evidences the presence of a lived moment embedded in specific time and place. Through rhythmically repeated gestures of the pencil line, Jaana Maijala attempts to capture this moment. In a second step, the artist takes photographs of her drawings. In her view, the use of the photographic medium allows for the possibility to arrest the continuous movement of shadows and textures, the color, depth and gravity reflected in the graphite of the pencil lead, and which forms that particular moment. What is more, through the process of photographing a new materiality of space is generated – that “what used to be pencil on a sheet of a notebook is now an illusion of mass”.