HARRI KALLIO
Biography

Born in Salla, Finland (b.1970)
Lives and works in New York

Harri Kallio (b. 1970) is a Finnish-American artist working at the intersection of photography based biological Imaging, mosaics and sculpture using entropy as a medium of transformation and artistic language. Originally from Finland, he has lived and worked in New York City since 2001. Kallio’s practice questions whether civilization can survive its own technological evolution. He explores the replacement of natural systems with simulations and examines the merging boundaries between organic and artificial agency. His work investigates what it means to be human primate—“mammals with computers”—in a post-natural world of mass extinction. Kallio’s projects share an interest in what happens at the edges—where nature meets technology, where memory of the natural origin of life becomes myth. 

Kallio’s first large scale project about extinction, using the Dodo as a case study “The Dodo and Mauritius Island, Imaginary Encounters” was well received and widely exhibited all over the world. His work has been featured at the Aperture Gallery, George Eastman House exhibition “Why Look at Animals” (2006), the International Center of Photography’s “Ecotopia: The Second ICP Triennial of photography and Video”, FotoFest 2006, Houston, Texas, Columbus Museum of Art (2007) and Bonni Benrubi Gallery, NYC (2006). His first monograph “The Dodo and Mauritius Island, Imaginary Encounters” was published in 2004 and won the The European Publisher’s Award for Photography. His work was also included in the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, “Photography and Engineering 1846-2006” exhibition in Lisbon, Portugal and Bozar, Brussels, Belgium. His work was also shown in Rare Bird: John James Audubon and Contemporary Art” exhibition at the Berman Museum, in Collegeville, PA (2016) and Whatcom museum Bellingham, WA (2018), titled “Endangered Species: Artists on the Front Line of Biodiversity”.

His work has appeared in numerous international magazines and publications including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Financial Times, The New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, Aperture Magazine, Lapham’s Quarterly, Citizen K, Le Monde2, El Pais Semanal (Spain), Universum Magazin (Austria), DPI Magazine (Taiwan), Falter Magazine (UK), “사진”, Photography”, (South Korea).
Kallio is the recipient of numerous grants including Finnish Arts Council and Finnish Cultural Foundation grants and the FotoFinlandia Prize Helsinki, Finland (2006). In 2007 he was invited to the Josef & Anni Albers Foundation Residency.