In May 2022 the arts magazine No-Niin carried an extended conversation between Sirkku Rosi and fellow artist Sakari Tervo. You can read the whole article here; we have selected some of the highlights.

Tell us about your current activities, and what you are concentrating on.

For the last six years I’ve been living with my partner in Lempäälä, a town next to Tampere. We have chickens, and we live next to a lovely small lake, so I go ice swimming quite regularly during wintertime. I was teaching full time for a while in Senior High School at Tampere, but I have been focusing more on my artistic practice for the last three years. Now I’m also studying at the Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki.

Let’s focus on your latest exhibition, A Fourth Round of Applause, at Gallery Huuto in Helsinki. It featured watercolours of naked bodies merging with various plants and, to quote your press release, ‘created a landscape where a utopia and dystopia were woven together to form an integrated garden.’ Tell us something about this exhibition.

It included many themes that I have been working on for quite a long time, like the idea of shared flesh or nonverbal knowledge with different kinds of beings, acknowledging that all kinds of beings have cells which resonate with each other.

Who do you use as models in your work?

I don’t usually use models when I paint bodies since my paintings are not portraits, and they do not need to be anatomically correct. I typically take the positions myself, and I try to sense how my body feels, the feeling of the position in my own flesh.

How does sex relate to your paintings?

Some people see my works as very sexual, but they are not as sexual as people think. My main goal is not usually to make sexual pictures, but I see sexuality as a naturally integrated part of being. My works are about decay and growth, and how it all happens simultaneously, that energy is in circulation.

And what about the pissing paintings, which some people have seen as quite controversial?

Well, there were none of my bush pissing paintings in this particular exhibition, though they are my long-term interest, related to the idea of circulation. I see pissing in the open air as an intriguing physiological and socio-political act, partly because it’s viewed differently if it’s a male or female body pissing. At least in Finland it’s quite normal if guys are pissing in the park, but it’s different for women. I think it’s pretty annoying that human waste and urine are globally polluting the seas, especially as at the same time we are producing synthetic urea for agriculture. Bush pissing is a beautiful moment, where the body is connected to nature.