Ainu Palmu Pink Caravan, 2024

The idea of a pink world, where anyone can go anywhere, enter even the greyest, most rugged terrain, just as they are, comes alive in the work Pink Caravan. When Pink Caravan arrives and the pink people, the Pinkisters, set their camp, creation is aglow! It is a garden of light with the power to colour the entire city in pink. Sound by Aake Otsala.

Ainu Palmu is a lighting designer and light artist. She also creates animations, other video content, and set designs for performances. Ainu graduated as a lighting designer from the Tampere School of Art and Media (BA) in 2000 and from University College London (MSc) in 2008.

She created her first light art pieces in 2010 and has since made works for both light art festivals and public spaces. The strong importance of storytelling from her work in performing arts has also carried over into her visual art. In her work, Ainu employs both abstraction and representation, exploring the dynamics between them. Her works are rarely static; the tension of change plays a significant role, and transitions are as important as the finished moment.

Ainu’s works explore the artistic value of beauty. For her, beauty encompasses both spectacle and the manifestation of rawness, as well as small, delicate things. She invites viewers to approach her work with a visually powerful first impression, which reveals new meanings upon closer inspection. Ainu does not shy away from dark subjects but presents them gently.

Her areas of interest include posthumanism and interspecies relations. Currently, she is curating a light art exhibition set to open in 2026, specifically aimed at an audience of birds and insects.

As an artist, Ainu does not see herself as an external observer, but as an active part of the world, connecting with others through art.