Juho Könkkölä, origami artist from Finland. Photo © Courtesy of the artist
1.Tell us what you do and your beginnings.
I am an origami artist and I create human figures from a square sheet of paper using origami folding techniques. I have been folding origami for over 15 years and started it as a young kid. For the most part origami has been my personal thing that I did to spend time. I didn’t think of myself becoming an origami artist, since I considered it a craft or a hobby at the time. That changed when I started to learn how to design my own creations in 2018. It became more a medium of expression for me that I purposefully practiced.
I studied art at the University of applied sciences in Tornio, Lapland, but I never had opportunities to study origami, so I learned it on my own. I studied other art media, such as traditional art, photography, videography, and digital art in 2D and 3D there.
I graduated in 2020 and since then I have been exhibiting my origami works around the country. Probably the most influential exhibition for me was the Generation 2020 Exhibition in Amos Rex, Helsinki. That made me consider starting to focus on origami rather than the other media I studied.
