Fossilized life form

What drives people across different times and cultures to create myths? Where does the spiritual need for imaginary beings arise in a world increasingly defined by science and technology? And how might we view the archaeological layering of our world from the perspective of future archaeology – as if it had already existed once and were merely awaiting rediscovery?

Mari Männa’s visual language is deliberately robust, combining a richly detailed yet abstract formal vocabulary with evocative imagery. A fossil may appear as a dinosaur embryo curled within a sphere – or perhaps as a moth. Texture is linked to landscape, to a surface that carries its own memory and temporality. Playfulness here is not ornament, but method: the artist allows the material to determine where cracks form and tension arcs emerge, so that form takes shape through resistance, chance, and endurance.