Kustaa Saksi (b. 1975, Kouvola, Finland) is a multidisciplinary artist based in Amsterdam. His work explores how we see and experience the world, focusing on perception as something unstable, shaped by both the body and the environment.
Working primarily with large-scale textile installations, Saksi creates immersive environments that challenge the boundary between what we see and what we feel. His works often draw on altered visual states, including migraine aura and the moments between sleeping and waking, where perception becomes fragmented and difficult to control.
Recurring visual elements—such as grids, spirals, and shifting patterns—appear throughout his work. These are not only images, but structures that can create disorientation, rhythm, and visual tension. Rather than illustrating perception, the works aim to recreate its instability.
Textile plays a central role in this process. Using jacquard weaving, Saksi builds complex surfaces from both natural and synthetic materials, including mohair, wool, rubber, metal, and phosphorescent yarns. These materials allow him to construct layered, responsive works that change depending on how they are viewed and experienced in space.
His installations extend beyond individual objects, forming environments that surround the viewer and shift with movement. In these spaces, perception becomes something shared between body, material, and environment.
Saksi’s work has been exhibited internationally at institutions including the Victoria and Albert Museum, Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, Design Museum Helsinki, and Museo Poldi Pezzoli. He has held solo exhibitions in New York, London, Paris, Hong Kong, and Amsterdam. In 2023, he was awarded the Pro Finlandia Medal of the Order of the Lion of Finland.
Working primarily with large-scale textile installations, Saksi creates immersive environments that challenge the boundary between what we see and what we feel. His works often draw on altered visual states, including migraine aura and the moments between sleeping and waking, where perception becomes fragmented and difficult to control.
Recurring visual elements—such as grids, spirals, and shifting patterns—appear throughout his work. These are not only images, but structures that can create disorientation, rhythm, and visual tension. Rather than illustrating perception, the works aim to recreate its instability.
Textile plays a central role in this process. Using jacquard weaving, Saksi builds complex surfaces from both natural and synthetic materials, including mohair, wool, rubber, metal, and phosphorescent yarns. These materials allow him to construct layered, responsive works that change depending on how they are viewed and experienced in space.
His installations extend beyond individual objects, forming environments that surround the viewer and shift with movement. In these spaces, perception becomes something shared between body, material, and environment.
Saksi’s work has been exhibited internationally at institutions including the Victoria and Albert Museum, Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, Design Museum Helsinki, and Museo Poldi Pezzoli. He has held solo exhibitions in New York, London, Paris, Hong Kong, and Amsterdam. In 2023, he was awarded the Pro Finlandia Medal of the Order of the Lion of Finland.