MY LATEST ART INTERVIEW BY JENS DANIEL BURMAN – ROUGHLY TRANSLATED:

– Who is Mia Makila? –

If Pippi Longstocking and Bergman ever had a love child – it would be me. I have that depth, seriousness and a delicate sensitivity in me. Maybe it’s my Finnish heritage. The melancholia. I also have a rebel in me – someone who goes against the mainstream ideas of things and who’s happily lifting a horse every now and then. The playfulness. The need for freedom. And the red hair of course. I am a melancholic and filthy Pippi. Old / young. I feel both antique in the heart where the painful wisdom is boiling, but I also have a child’s imagination. Both have humor. The dark humor is important to me. And to tell the truth and to be honest. It permeates everything I do. Even if the truth is a fuzzy concept.

– What scared you as a child? –

Shadows. I was terribly afraid of shadows when I was a little girl. I could not understand why a dark figure would insist on stalking me wherever I would go. When I was a little girl sitting in the back seat of our car, I pulled up the legs and screamed like hell because of the strange shadows on the back of the driver’s seat. In order to mitigate these experiences I had a security blanket – old nylon stockings with three holes in it, I sucked on it during car trips. It sounds more kinky than it was.

– Tell me about your art? –

I create mostly digital art, ie, photo manipulation and digital collages, using PhotoShop (and coffee), but I also paint in acrylic on canvas or wooden panels. I have no unified style, because I create both digitally and with brushes so it will be completely different expressions and techniques, but there is a a common theme throughout everything I create; strong and tough expression straight out of my mind, and from my burning and bleeding core.

I already knew when I was five years old that I would become an artist. I made a collage of half-naked ladies from perfume ads I cut out of the mother’s Femina and  embarrassed my parents by showing them to everyone. I have always liked to provoke and to see people’s reactions to what I have created. A small god complex, perhaps, or a way to be seen. Reaching out – and all the way to the core.

My art is referred to as ‘horror art’ or ‘lowbrow’. Sometimes ‘pop surrealism’. None of these genres is especially established here in Sweden, almost no gallery owner I have talked with in Sweden have known the term “pop surrealism”. Therefore, I am mostly active overseas, or I send my works to international exhibitions and is quite famous in these genres. I have built a huge network of artists all over the world. There, I feel welcome and like I am making sense. In Sweden, nobody gets what I’m doing. My cock-lolitas and anxiety demons are so non-swedish. They demand space, they are loud and creating scenes. “Fuck it! Here I come!”. It is liberating. But I think many people think I’m crazy, which is OK for me. Rather crazy than normal. For real.

– Can you share any plans for the future? – 

I’ve been gone a few years from the art. I was hit suddenly by a creativity crisis – which later became an identity crisis, depression and in the end resulted in a burnout. I just started painting again. And I will create an entirely new collection of work that I will be exhibiting in Sweden for a year or so. This time, both the Pippi Longstocking and Bergman raise their voices and I will be more of everything that people like with me. More of me and more craziness too.

Then I want to write. Books. And short stories. And all that would come out will come out. I am really looking forward to it.

More exhibitions abroad. Preferably several major group exhibitions. It feels fantastic to exhibit with the artists I  look up to!

– What a movie, book or art makes you tremble from fear? –

All religious scriptures. They are so full of prejudices, outdated ideas and really boring stories. Then they bring bigotry, war, shit and misery. No, I get depressed just thinking about it.

I am also really scared of illustrated medical books, I am such a hypochondriac.

– What makes you crawl into bed and hide under the covers? – 

When my dark past comes back for a little visit.

– Do you have any skeletons in the closet? –

No, I’ve cleaned out that closet in therapy. But I have old love letters, some latex face masks from old photo projects in my closet. And some vibrators course.

– The nastiest place you been to? –

My apartment during the five years I lived with an abuser.

– Favorite Monster? –

Mårran in Tove Jansson’s books. She’s fat like a great mountain. A snuggle-monster.

LINK TO THE SWEDISH INTERVIEW HERE

I am in bed, sick with anxiety. I’ve reached a point where I no longer have a clear place to go to in my mind, because I am changing. My old consciousness is dying, the person I used to be is fading. But I haven’t found a new way of thinking yet, my new consciousness is not fully developed yet. I feel so fragile. I don’t have a home inside my mind right now because everything is changing.

There is no solid ground. My emotions are raw and at times absurdly exaggerated – it’s like my mind lacks any filter or structure. I feel every emotion as it is, without any limits, with maximum volume, always gravitating towards the wounds in my heart.

The rage I’ve been trying to repress is there, I can feel it glowing with fire somewhere inside. I don’t want it. It’s uncomfortable and feels foreign to me. Unnatural. I’ve never been able to express my rage, because I was always afraid of being punished afterwards. I don’t know how to deal with it since it feels so unfamiliar. At times I feel like screaming and destroying things to get it all out of my system, but I know it wouldn’t be enough. And it scares me. I want confrontations. I want justice. Closure. A chance to stand up for myself,, face to face with the ones causing me pain. There is no other way to get closure on the rage, but perhaps I won’t get a chance to do this, because they are too uncomfortable with facing their guilt and they don’t want to take responsibility for what they’ve done to me. It’s easy to be a coward and it takes strength to face your own guilt.

So the impossible nature of the rage turns into a bitter frustration – a silent black spot in my mind. Like it doesn’t exist more than in my fear of the thought that it would happen again. Their abuse. Their disgust and contempt of me. The rage turns into fear – the fear turns into isolation. An unnecessary self-defense strategy. And that is my prison. My fear.

I am so scared of love. At times I feel like I just want to give up. I’m constantly waiting to be betrayed or humiliated. All I have known in my heart is pain, this new happiness doesn’t seem to fit inside the pain, it’s pushing it all out and for some reason I’m making so much resistance.

But the happiness is there. The love is strong and solid. I feel ashamed of my freak outs but I feel safe and allowed to be who I am, with my weaknesses and the fear and all the ugliness I see in myself. He loves me, not the idea of me. I feel naked and exposed. But free.

I need to get out of this place where my fragility is the midpoint where all my experiences meet. Changing is so scary, but healthy. But at times I feel like I’m slowly losing my mind where there is no structure or reality right now, just old and tired ways of thinking that doesn’t work anymore and a vague understanding of who I am changing into.

I just have to hold on. I just have to keep moving forward.

One of my favorite songs.

You are pointing your burning gun at me. Aiming straight at my heart. I know you want to kill me. Or love me. To me, it’s the same thing. I want you to kill me that way. I want to explode together with whatever comes out of that gun. I want to dissolve right in front of you, to surrender to the moment – and to the danger of it. But instead, I try to hide behind my shadow. My fear. The gun is still burning. My words are black.

No light is brighter than your promise to shoot me. I’m blinded. Trying to look away. But I can’t.

I’m staring right into death. Or love. Whatever. That’s when I feel your bullets hit me right in the heart. Bullets of fire. I can’t breathe. I don’t want to.
I can feel how everything is destroyed. Or saved. Or whatever. Blackbirds, blood moons, lion breaths, rotten flower beds – like fireworks above it all. Exploding within and inside.

And I realize – I don’t know the difference between love and a beautiful murder.

A morning with U2.

Ever since I was a child people have been telling me that I’m “too curious” and sometimes they’ve even asked me to stop asking so many difficult questions. I have never figured out why some people don’t like curiosity or why or when people stop asking important questions without any obvious answers (the best kind).

For me it’s unthinkable to stop asking questions or questioning the obvious or exploring the unknown. In fact, I think it would dangerous if I would lose my curiosity and my strive to learn more and try to make sense of things. Then my mind would be closed off, shut down and I wouldn’t be able to grow and develop myself anymore. I believe that if we constantly want to grow and maintain our inner selves and if we try to expand our empathy and intellect, that that’s the true core of our existence.

I usually use gmail drafts as digital post it notes for thoughts I want to remember. I went through some of the older drafts and found this, I don’t remember why I used caps lock, if I was upset or excited.

I don’t know if this drawing by Greg Ruth is of a man or a woman but I feel so connected to it somehow. I just wanted to share it with you.

This horrible and grim fairytale was my grandmother’s favorite to share with me as a little girl. No wonder I grew up to be a horror artist.

(skip the intro)

I was talking to a gallery owner yesterday and as we were deep into a conversation about my art he said something that I’ve been told all my life: “I guess you are a little crazy, like all artists are in some way!”

I always laugh and say “Of course I am crazy!” But I never really understand what they are referring to because to me “crazy” is to be out of control and irresponsible, and I can’t relate to that at all.

In fact, I feel like I’m ‘uncrazy’ and free of what society is trying to force upon me – norms, narrow minded ideas of how I am supposed to live my life: “eat-sleep-work-consume”, celebrating holidays and traditions, believing in mainstream values and ideals and not questioning things, but just going along with whatever everyone else feels comfortable with.

I can’t do that. My soul is too free in spirit, my heart is too alive and my mind is too curious about life beyond the hamster wheel of everyday life.

And I’m not scared to explore darker human themes in my art, such as fear, anxiety, rage and sexuality.

But I guess it’s easy for people to label people like me as a little ” crazy” because it’s easier to put a distance to a free spirit than to make an effort to be one. Because it’s really hard work to stay free and it takes a lot of dedication and effort.

It’s easier to just let go of any resistance and fall into the pre-made ideas if how a life should look and feel like. What kind of sex you should feel OK with, what kind of music you are supposed to consume, what kind of opinions you are supposed to have, taste in clothes, routines in your everyday life, where you are supposed to travel to feel like you are still alive and curious, emotions that are OK to show and emotions that you have to suppress.

I can’t do that. I tried to live like that in many of my old relationships but I always ended up feeling like a guest in my own life and Iost my sense of identify.

I am OK with being labeled as “crazy” because with it comes a freedom of being true to who I am, even if I’m included in a group of human beings who act and think in ways I can’t relate to like mentally insane people, society oucasts, killers and criminals. Perhaps people mistake the word “crazy” for “free spirit”in this context. Because there is nothing sick or criminal with staying true to who you really are.

It is so liberating.