Flagellate Searching for Love (2024) captures slime mold moving along symbols of love, diagrams of reproductive cells and signs of genders. Themes are searching for love, relationships, sex and reproduction. The film explores the mechanism of falling in love, and love and sexual attraction. It is thought that these areas of life occur at the cellular level. What really happens when a very charming cellular formation hits? Is love a biological process based on finding suitable cells?
Leena Pukki (b. 1984) is a visual artist whose work explores interspecies relationships, history, alternative realities, colors and single-celled organisms. Her artistic techniques are diverse, ranging from media art and bio-art to large-scale mural paintings and installations.
Pukki holds a Master of Arts from Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture (2015) and a Bachelor of Arts in Fine Arts from Lahti University of Applied Sciences (2007). She got Maecenas Guild Award from Kunsthalle Helsinki’s Young Artists 2019-exhibition. Her art piece In Search of Perfection is part of Finnish State Art Deposit Collection.
Pukki’s works have been shown at the Venice Biennale as part of Miracle Workers Collective, Kunsthalle Helsinki, Pori and Lappeenranta art museums, and at film festivals for example in Sweden, Norway, Germany, Indonesia, Canada, and Ukraine.
She is a founding member of the Route Couture artist group and a member of MUU ry, AV-Arkki, Bioart Society and Kuvasto. She lives and works between Cairo and Helsinki.