Finnish artist Marianne Huotari creates a lush dreamlike world through her intricately layered ceramic wall tapestries and sculptures.
She spent a year preparing six new pieces for her first US solo show, Voyage. These works and more are now on view at HB381, Scandinavian-focused gallery Hostler Burrows’s Lower Manhattan exhibition space, through October 31.
Huotari often uses a title as a starting point in her process. For this show, the work became about a sense of place, with works titled By the Waterfall, Night in the Arboretum, and Tree of Tales. “It’s about going somewhere, being somewhere,” she says. “That’s the voyage.”
Working from her studio at Helsinki’s Arabia Art Department Society, Huotari makes various shapes and sizes of clay beads by hand, often leaving visible fingerprints. She colors the clay with pigments or glazes before firing them multiple times and sewing the pieces together. Inspired by Finnish hand-knotted rya rugs—a centuries-old traditional style characterized by a long thick wool pile—Huotari then weaves together thousands of these individual clay beads to create richly textured sculptures.
Huotari with Euphoric Bloom, 2026, hand-beaded glazed stoneware, 48 x 28.75 x 23.75 in.
