My research interests lie at the intersection of art history, aesthetics, and politics, with a specific focus on the autonomy of art. I am particularly interested in considering the concept of autonomy as a modus operandi of artworks to explore how a work of art emerges, operates, and thus creates a transformative event.

My ongoing doctoral research focuses on ecocritical art that plays a key role in facilitating social and political transformations with regard to ecological problems. This research investigates the ways in which ecocritical art offers new sensations to generate transformative experiences. I draw on the theories of the autonomy of art, for example the process autonomy, to study how artworks emerge and operate in unpredictable ways to create such transformative experiences. I study this first by concentrating on how the emergence of artwork comprises the uncontrolled involvement of many forces, such as organisms, chemicals, and so on, and how these involvements affect the sensations and meanings that artworks pursue. Second, I analyze the operation process of artworks by putting an emphasis on their interaction with the surroundings, specifically with natural forces such as wind, sun, water, and so on. Subsequently, I discuss how the new sensations arising from these processes of artworks can make an impact on the socio-political sphere toward change.

So far, I have been collaborating with the artists Hanna Saarikoski and Heini Aho.

The supervisors of this research are Katve-Kaisa Kontturi and Milla Tiainen.