Creative based in Helsinki
Painter
Writer
Producer
Designer
Co-founder of the
circle poetry collectiveBorn in 1999 in Indianapolis, Indiana (USA), Aino Rahkonen has spent her life between the USA and Finland. Since 2020, she has lived full-time in Helsinki, Finland. Rahkonen holds a Bachelor’s in Interactive Media and Illustration Art from Indiana University, and is completing a Master’s in Intercultural Encounters from the University of Helsinki. In 2024, she had in her first exhibition ‘Spaces as Archives’ at Tekstin Talo alongside her group the Circle Poetry Collective. She self-published her first book, ‘Too Defining’, in 2022. The exhibition ‘under the trees’ at Asbestos 2025 was her first solo exhibition.Ranging from installations of large-scale paintings to poetry and prose, Aino Rahkonen’s practice pairs artistic form with words, finding ways to express more feelings than just what can be described. She works with depictions of the natural world to parallel the human experience, reminding us of the innateness and inevitability of our lives here on earth. Her cross-disciplinary training allows for multi-media projects to be born.

15. - 21.7.24Our group, the Circle Poetry Collective, curated a visual poetry exhibition for this UrbanApa x Tekstintalo residency. The title was ‘Spaces as Archives: Identities Through Time’. We compiled works, edited texts, worked on common themes, and then came in with one week to put together a cohesive exhibition. I learned so much about the time it takes and the logistics of the curation of an exhibit. I felt energized to come work everyday, and woke up happier than I usually do, so it felt like something I want to do more of. It was such a privilege to be given the space, materials, and emotional support to be creative all week and express your vision. That type of real experience is so valuable, and I’m so aware how difficult it is to connect the creative vision to the actual curation because logistics start to cloud the original vision of the project.The exhibition featured 6 of my poems, as well as 3 of my paintings. I loved being able to exhibit poems and paintings together, as my creativity does often come in multiple forms at once. I had painted with the same things in mind as I had been writing about, so I hoped that could be felt and something could be gained from seeing both pieces at the same time. The exhibition ended with two of my paintings hanging from the ceiling with the poems written on the ground.I am so proud of our work as a team as well. I had never collaborated on a creative project before and although this was made up of our individual works, the curation of the exhibit required a lot of group decisions, creative support, team thinking, compromise, ideas from others that you would have never thought of, insisting upon your vision, learning when to insist versus allow other ideas, etc.

map that we handed out to all visitors to introduce context for each artwork