Mari Mäntynen’s artistic practice explores what happens between people when familiar social roles, expectations and boundaries are disrupted. She is interested in how we encounter one another, and whether new forms of understanding can emerge through shared situations.

Mäntynen works with photography, video and performance, often creating situations in which she participates herself. Collaboration, play and absurdity become methods for approaching difficult or socially charged subjects. Rather than observing social situations from the outside, she constructs them, enters into them and shares the experience with the people involved.

Her photographs and videos often emerge from encounters that are carefully set up but remain open to what happens between the participants. Questions of intimacy, power, trust and social norms become part of the image-making process itself.

In her practice, Mäntynen continually places herself at the edges of social norms and her own comfort zone, using this position as a way to explore what happens between people. She is interested in the friction that emerges when people are asked to step outside familiar roles, creating situations in which relationships can be reconsidered and reality briefly rearranged.

Mari Mäntynen (b. 1997) is a Finnish visual artist working with photography, video and performance. Born and raised in Kerava, Finland, she grew up on the grounds of Kerava Prison, where her father worked as a prison guard. This personal history informs several of her ongoing projects.

Mäntynen holds a Master of Fine Arts degree from the Academy of Fine Arts, University of the Arts Helsinki (2025).

Her first solo exhibition was presented at Peri Photography Centre in Turku, Finland, in 2022. Her work has been exhibited in group exhibitions at Vantaa Art Museum Artsi and Amos Rex Art Museum, among others, and internationally at Copenhagen Photo Festival and Fotofestiwal Łódź.

Mäntynen’s works are held in the collections of the Finnish National Gallery, Museum of Visual Arts Malva and in private collections.