Trickster Magazine

When did you start noticing themes like climate, identity, and social issues merging in your work?

From the beginning. My work has always existed in the context of climate destruction and the impossibility of creating something new without taking more from the world. I decided to use materials that can be reused again and again – so the artwork almost never truly exists.

Questions of identity came later. I had been involved in activism and environmental work, but it was through confronting my background as an adoptee – facing the legacy of colonialism and climate crisis – that I saw how these issues share the same roots. Living between two cultures has made me sensitive to belonging and displacement, and that “in-between” space has become the ground from which I create.

Identity, nature, and political reality can’t be separated. They’re all part of the same web where personal and collective histories, violence and healing, human and earth intertwine.

Stop Killing belt by Aida Impact

What draws you to discarded materials, and how do they help you build the political and emotional landscapes in your installations?

Discarded materials carry memory – traces of human presence, violence, and transformation. Working with what’s been left behind allows me to question systems of value and consumption. Each object holds a history; by reworking it, I try to create a dialogue between destruction and renewal, grief and hope.

Through how a society treats its trash, you can glimpse how it treats its most vulnerable people. Reuse becomes an ecological and ethical gesture, but also a poetic one: a way of insisting that even what seems broken can still hold dignity and meaning.

The Floor is Lava is monumental in both scale and message. How did it evolve, and what do you discover each time you rebuild it?

The Floor is Lava began as a response to the overwhelming presence of waste – an attempt to confront how the climate crisis is tied to our habits of consumption. The early works were vast surfaces of discarded plastics transformed into fragile landscapes.

Over time, the project evolved into Lavandera, a performance where washing black plastic became both a political and poetic act. The gesture echoed the Indigenous, Black, and mestiza women of Latin America who historically washed the clothes of the wealthy while being exploited. Through that act, the piece shifted from representing the problem to enacting a kind of healing – reclaiming agency and honoring invisible labor.

Each new version changes with the local environment, community, and materials. Waste is never just material – it’s a mirror. It reflects our disconnection but also our capacity to restore balance through care and shared action.

Landys with Floor is Lava mountain, photographed by Pietari Purovaara
Caiman in the room (2023)
Mujer Caiman (2023) collaboration with Peregrino Print

Black Jaguar (2023)

Learning about your Muisca and Tayrona roots seems to have deeply impacted your work. How has that discovery influenced your relationship with nature and responsibility?

Learning about my Muisca and Tayrona ancestry has deeply influenced how I see myself – even though I’m not Indigenous. Most Colombians have Indigenous ancestry, but being Indigenous is about an ongoing cultural legacy and community, from which I was erased through adoption and displacement.

This discovery taught me that art isn’t separate from nature or community – it’s a form of relationship. I was born in Bogotá in 1992, during one of the most violent periods in Colombia’s history. Returning decades later, I realized that this violence extended to the destruction of the land itself. My journey was not about finding biological parents but about finding my Colombia – belonging through care rather than ownership.

These cultures honor nature as the ultimate authority and humans as protectors. That realization gave my practice new purpose: art as reciprocity. Living between Colombia and Finland means navigating privilege and loss, abundance and exclusion. My responsibility is to listen, unlearn, and use the resources I have to support voices that might otherwise go unheard.

You’ve worked with artists rooted in Indigenous traditions. How do those collaborations unfold?

I’ve collaborated with Colombian artists Estefanía García and Edinson Quiñones, both deeply rooted in Indigenous traditions and collective practices. Together we explore how colonial and capitalist systems have fractured both culture and environment.

Our collaboration isn’t about extraction – it’s about creating spaces where knowledge and care flow both ways. Those who carry ancestral memory of loss also carry the knowledge of repair. Indigenous voices must lead these conversations because they speak from within the wound itself.

What can we learn from Indigenous relationships with nature?

To see ourselves as part of a larger whole – not separate from nature or each other, but deeply connected. Seeing the world as a living, sacred system reminds us to slow down, listen, and nurture reciprocal relationships with the Earth.

You’ve said, “We are the ancestral mothers of the future.” What stories do you hope your work passes on, and what stories are you trying to let go of?

The stories we carry today shape the world future generations inherit. I hope to pass on stories of resilience, healing, and connection – to the land, to each other, and to our roots.

At the same time, I want to release stories that trap us in pain and silence. It’s difficult to stay hopeful as hate rises around the world, but seeing people march for peace and act out of empathy gives me strength.

I want to stand with these future ancestors and help release inherited trauma so that the next generations inherit hope, unity, and joy. And I want to pass on my love of laughter – it keeps us sane and connected. People united can never be silenced.

Hair appears often in your work. How do you see it in relation to identity and memory?

Hair symbolizes connection – to ancestry, identity, and the earth. In Landscapes (2022), long black hair takes real and imagined forms, acting like antennae that link me to unknown pasts and ancestral women. Hair is a living archive, weaving together memory, history, and spirituality.

In a new series, I use hair to explore colonialism, assimilation, and loss – the severing of ties caused by adoption. Through it, I reclaim what was broken and highlight the tension between what colonial power values and what holds cultural worth.

 Inflorescence (2023)

You live between Colombia and Finland. How does this “in-between” space influence your work?

Living between two cultures is both rich and challenging. It means navigating belonging and estrangement, connection and loss. My work explores these tensions – identity, history, and the search for roots.

Being raised in Finland but rooted in Colombia gives me a double lens. It pushes me to create art that connects rather than divides and reminds me that art carries both the weight of history and the power to imagine new futures.

You’ve said your dreams inspire your work. What was your latest dream?

I dreamt I was underwater in a river, the water shimmering like emeralds. I was crying, but someone I loved held me close so I wouldn’t be swept away. As I cried, centuries passed, but we stayed together beneath that timeless flow. It was both painful and peaceful.

How are you planning to spend the winter?

I’ll travel to Colombia to continue my research and artistic work, learn cumbia, and keep building another home there.