Marianne Huotari’s Voyage reimagines Finnish textile traditions in ceramic at HB381

HB381 presents Voyage, a solo exhibition by Finland-based artist Marianne Huotari, on view from September 9 – October 31, 2026. The art exhibition brings together Huotari’s intricately beaded sculptures and expansive wall works, transforming the visual language of traditional Finnish rya textiles into a series of tactile ceramics. “Although primarily a ceramicist in practice, textile design is Huotari’s métier; through a care-intensive process of craftsmanship, the artist sculpts hundreds of oblong ceramic beads, rounded medallions and crimped petals by hand before affixing them to a metal armature with wire,” HB381 explains in the show's description.

For Voyage, Huotari draws on botanical forms, clothing, folklore and the carnivalesque. Works such as Night in the Arboretum and By the Waterfall, her largest wall work to date, evoke lush gardens through densely layered fields of colour and pattern. Their visual language moves between the psychedelic patterns of the 1970s, the decorative exuberance of Art Nouveau and Rococo, and the handmade aesthetic of counterculture craft.

“Composed of hundreds and at times thousands of individually sculpted ceramic beads and tiles, Huotari’s works emit a panoply of sensory impressions—sonic, tactile, vibrantly optic—which insist on the immersive and altogether transportative properties of visual experience: art as a portal and a conduit to the psyche,” the art gallery notes.

A lot of her work is also inspired by the Pattern and Decoration movement, giving nods to artists such as Howardena Pindell, Joyce Kozloff and Robert Kushner. “Other works like Verdant Daydreamer and Tree of Tales resonate deeply with Finnish folklore and its fantastical descriptions of woodlands, lakes and tundra,” the contemporary art gallery notes.

The exhibition also reflects Huotari’s longstanding engagement with rya weaving, a Finnish and Scandinavian long-pile textile tradition that dates to the 15th century. Originally used as functional maritime blankets, rya textiles later developed into elaborate decorative works and became an important part of Nordic design. In Voyage, the contemporary artist translates this heritage into ceramic, replacing textile pile with stoneware beads and thread with metallic wire.

“While the artist’s primary medium is ceramics, her practice could easily be described as world-building. The works in Voyage seem plucked from a place far more fantastic than our own—a realm in which you are invited to wander,” curator, writer and researcher Elizabeth Essener concludes in her essay for the show.