Finland
Hello, I'm Aino
Mäkinen
I trace the 5,000-year-old red ochre paintings on Finland’s lakeside cliffs — elk, boats, human figures mid-dance — and press them into Shaki silk using the same iron-oxide pigment. The oldest human marks, on the oldest silk tradition.
Aino Mäkinen grew up on the shores of Lake Saimaa in southern Finland, where the granite cliffs along the waterways still hold 5,000-year-old paintings in red ochre — human figures, elk, boats, and geometric marks left by Stone Age hunters who believed the rock was alive. She spent her childhood tracing these shapes with her fingers. She spent her adulthood learning to press them into silk.
The Astuvansalmi cliff is eleven metres above the lake surface now. When the Stone Age painters stood on their boats and pressed red ochre into the granite, the water was at eye level. They painted from the water, looking straight into the rock face. The paintings were not meant to be looked at from below. They were made at the level of the eye, in the moment. I have been thinking about that for thirty years. When Thor Heyerdahl stood at Gobustan and saw the same boat shapes that appear at Astuvansalmi, he asked: are these the same people? I think the question is more interesting than the answer. What it means is that 8,000 years ago, humans in what is now Azerbaijan and humans in what is now Finland were pressing the same marks into stone. The same impulse. The same hand. I ordered iron-oxide pigment — the same mineral the Astuvansalmi painters used — from a natural dye supplier in Helsinki. I ground it myself. I carved linden wood blocks with the elk shape, the boat shape, the figure mid-dance. When I pressed the first test onto Shaki silk, the colour was exactly the colour of the cliff paintings. The rock art left Saimaa. It found its way home to the Caucasus. I did not plan this. The material planned it.
— Aino Mäkinen, Saimaa Lakeland, Finland
The motif
Astuvansalmi elk
Finland · c. 3000 BC · red ochre on granite
Dyed by hand in Shaki, Azerbaijan
Collections by Aino Mäkinen
The Saimaa Collection
Stone Age rock art motifs, iron-oxide natural dye · 12 pieces
12 pieces
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