Kirsi Manninen, MA, is a Helsinki-based costume designer, teacher of digital drawing and a doctoral candidate at the Department of Film, Television and Scenography, Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture. The topic of her research isCreating a Character – Thinking and Communication through Analogue and Digital Costume Sketching fromthepoint of view of the costume designer. She has specialized in costume design and rendering, and is one of the pioneers of teaching digital drawing and its techniques on the touch screen in Finland and abroad.
Kirsi’s current activities moves fluently between research, costume design and research-ledteaching. Her career as a costume designer includes over one hundred productions in television, theatre and film as well as circus, dance, shadow theatre, black theatre, puppetry, Beijing opera, ice dance, mask theatre and multimedia. She worked over thirty years as scenographer for Dance Theatre Hurjaruuth, contributing the visual identity of the organization at an international level.
Hermethodology as a costume designer has been the subject of other academic research, Master’s Thesis: ‘The Many Dimensions of Circus Costume – Kirsi Manninen as a costume designer in Winter Circus’, Author of the Master’s Thesis: Elisa Avikainen, University of Helsinki 2016.
She has had a solo exhibition celebrating her 25-years career as an artist at the Theatre Museum in Helsinki and has received a one-year artist grand from the Arts Promotion Centre Finland.
2014
Photos: Kirsi Manninen
1998
Tove Idström – Heidi Köngäs – Kari Kyrönseppä
Photo: Ari-Pekka Keränen.
2001
Kaj Chydenius – Arja Pettersson
Photo: Riku Virtanen
2009
Heikki Leppävuori
Photo: Riku Virtanen.
2009
Photo: Leena Klemelä.
2012
Hannu Oskala – Arja Pettersson
Photo: Kirsi Manninen.
2013
Photo: Riku Virtanen