In her recent exhibition “A Thousand Plateaus,” artist Lana Haga turns repurposed plastics, cotton twine, and oil paint into sculptural forms that feel simultaneously ancient and futuristic. Based in Vaasa, Finland, Haga approaches material as a living archive. Each work becomes a reflection on how bodies and environments shift, fracture, endure, and rebuild within a world defined by overproduction and ecological instability.
Presented with MUU Contemporary Art Centre in Helsinki, the exhibition centers on the idea of constant change across material and conceptual systems. Haga draws inspiration from the philosophical text A Thousand Plateaus by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, particularly the concept of the rhizome. Rather than growing upward in a single direction, a rhizome expands outward in many paths at once. This idea resonates with Haga’s evolving practice, which does not follow a linear method but instead moves where material intuition leads.
The sculptures made from discarded plastics feel like artifacts of a future in recovery. Their layered surfaces suggest sediment, coral, fossils, or remnants of infrastructure. Instead of presenting waste as static, Haga frames it as material with memory. The result invites viewers to consider how destruction and renewal are intertwined.
The relief works made from cotton twine and oil paint explore a slower rhythm. Each line of twine builds a soft architecture that moves across the canvas like mapping, breathing, or branching systems found in biology and geology. They read as diagrams of a world negotiating collapse and regeneration.
The exhibition was accompanied by a fifty minute ambient sound composition by French sound artist Fayf Abad. The soundscape underscored the works without overpowering them, creating an atmosphere that encouraged stillness and immersion. Together, the visual and sonic elements transformed the space into a study of tension and possibility.
Haga’s work sits in the space between decay and evolution. Nothing is final or fixed. Everything continues to shift.
