30.05.2025

The animation buzz will take over Turku again in August, when the Turku Animated Film Festival celebrates its 10th anniversary. This year’s impressive festival trailer and visual look is based on artist Vappu Rossi’s work Tree of life. Watch the trailer below:

“The power of change overcomes existential fear, as the similarity in the growth of tree branches, leaf veins or human blood vessels is revealed in all its beauty”

Vappu Rossi (b. 1976) is an award-winning visual artist based in Helsinki, known for pushing the boundaries of drawing and multidisciplinary collaboration with different artistic and scientific disciplines. Rossi’s work, which oscillates between drawing, animation, installation and media art, deals with issues such as human emotions, movement, the passage of time and change. Rossi has collaborated extensively with dancers, musicians, scientists and cultural institutions both in Finland and internationally. She is also the first female Drawing Master of the University of Helsinki Art Room in the room’s more than 300-year history.

“I’m fascinated by making slow change visible in art. I work with very different mediums and methods, such as light boxes, paintings or giant wall drawings. However, I always find similar themes of presence, embodiment, transience and ephemerality underlining my art. The power of change overcomes existential fear, as the similarity in the growth of tree branches, leaf veins or human blood vessels is revealed in all its beauty,” says Rossi of her work. Watch the full interview below:

“Charcoal is one of the first things people used to draw with. Because you can erase and redraw it for as long as the paper lasts, it’s an interesting technique for creating metamorphoses”

Rossi is shortlisted for the The 2025 Below Zero art award, an annual British contemporary art prize for an internationally emerging Finnish artist, presented by the Beaconsfield Gallery, the Finnish Institute in Britain and Ireland in association with Serlachius. This year’s TAFF will also feature Rossi’s media piece Generatio spontanea, which has toured international film festivals. See you at TAFF!

Turku Animated Film Festival 20.-24.8. | taff.fi