The exhibition highlights recurring themes in my art: the collaboration between art and science, the importance of materials and color pigments from nature, and female artists and researchers as a source of inspiration.

When I was given the wonderful opportunity to exhibit at the Stockholm Academy of Fine Arts, my first step was to investigate whether I could find interesting works by female artists in the academy's collections, as female artists and explorers have long been of great interest to me. In Anna Lena Lindberg's article "Through the Needle's Eye" I read about needle painting and could hardly believe my eyes. Was this needle painting done with silk thread?

In April 2025, I visited the Academy of Fine Arts to see several works by the Academy's female embroiderers from the 1700th century. I was truly enchanted by what I saw: how was it possible to depict such views and such detail with a needle and silk thread? As a starting point for the exhibition, I chose Ulrica Melin's (1767-1834) magnificent silk embroidery "Vaisseaux dans le port". There were many different points of contact that interested me; the copper engraving that was the model for Melin's work, which is also a technique that I work with, and combining the sewing needle and the engraving needle together. Melin's harbor scene as a motif could also lead to my color expeditions to different beaches and harbors from which I have made my color pigments for the exhibition.

In the exhibition, I present natural science through two botanical themes: pitcher plants (Veronica spicata), which leads us to ecologist Ilkka Hanski's research in Åland, and pitcher plants (Nepenthes), which takes us to the tropics and the footsteps of the Victorian botanical painter Marianne North (1830–1890). On a journey – which has just begun together with the author Mia Kankimäki.

In conjunction with the exhibition, a book “The Needle Painter and Foreign Ports” will be published, which contains two new texts by Mia Kankimäki, as well as art historian Eva-Charlotta Mebius’ text about Ulrica Melin. Art educator Päivi Fernström writes about, among other things, embroidery work that she has done in Katja’s stone lithograph.