Pipi-Lotta Kulla
Degree: Fine Art with History of Art
University: University of Leeds
Graduation Year: 2023
New Blood Art Commentary
Pipi-Lotta Kulla uses photography as her primary medium to explore the duality between collective and individual experience and memory. Kulla also explores the relationship between her Urban life in England and her ‘isolated’ rural roots in Estonia. Her images show everyday scenes but call for more attention through their sensitivity and quietness, as Kulla asks for the viewer to rethink daily stimuli that is often missed. Her work allows for dissociation and brings out an unconscious familiarity with the scenes she sets, even if one has never seen it before, almost as if Kulla is helping unlock a deep-set forgotten memory.
Artist Statement
Pipi-Lotta Kulla is an Estonian artist who has been based in the UK since 2014. Her work focuses on the tensions that arise when attempting to reconcile the societal worth of solitary experience with that of collective experience. She explores the nexus between memory (collective and individual), unconscious familiarity and dissociation, and the sensations of confinement and freedom within the mind. By paying attention to what rises within us as we move through our day-to-day lives, she highlights the visceral sensitivities that we often overlook, and where these come from. Her upbringing among seven siblings and the frequent transit between England and Estonia, alternating between the alien urban life of England and the distant, isolated rural life of Estonia, also forms the basis of much of her work.
Group Exhibitions
(2021) Bloom, Public Garden, Hyde Park, Leeds