Aili Løchen (born 1994) is a Norwegian artist, linguist and psychologist who began to publish poetry and cartoons online in 2021. Aili reached out to us wanting to share her work, connect with other creatives, and to reflect on creativity and some factors that influence her artwork. She had her first exhibition in Oslo in the summer of 2024, her first commissioned work for Thermo Fisher Scientific in 2025 and is publishing poetry, artwork and events on her Instagram and website.

Q: What inspires you to create?

A: I love and am inspired by art that is driven by a collective discovery process or shared curiosity – a desire to articulate what feels too extensive for one mind to grasp alone. It connects with my clinical work and research in psychology, and with issues many current generations are navigating reconnecting, with both peers and across ages, faiths, ethnic backgrounds and countries while living under the pressure of the attention economy. I’m currently in my 30s and discovered sometime in the last five years that there are certain depths of experience that really requires and yearn for connecting with another in order for
the tension to be released, or in order for you to be able to fully explore it. It is as if we are somewhat half-baked on our own, creatively as well. Each piece, both poetry and music and artwork, is a search for the words or expression to capture a sensation or experience, in order to stay present, to stay honest and not look away in a distressing time. The attempt to express and not suppress is enough, it represents the beginning of a creative process, and the wish to rediscover how we give these processes the time and nurturing they need to develop properly in a fast-paced life online where we are constantly bombarded with distractions. It is a tool to stay grounded, honest, true – to notice when something deeply touches me, and to connect with others through this.

Creativity is incredibly confusing at times – I rarely know beforehand when something I made ends up resonating with someone, and I am often surprised at what it is that flows out on the canvas. If there is a big plan, I certainly only have partly access to it. It feels as if it is not mine alone, so I better put it out there to find the others working in this strange and wonderful way. I wish to continue to shape this practice and develop my sensitivity alongside others in a time where healthy creative spaces and communities are as essential as ever. There’s a lot that is overwhelming and too large for one person to take on alone with the tempo and amount of information, so at least in my life one way to tackle this creatively has been to move towards this idea of co-creating: «I saw something – I felt something – and here is but a fraction of it. Perhaps you’re holding a piece of it too.» So, my poetry and music become part of a larger conversation with people around me, creative and sensitive resistance almost – we are people experiencing the same time, from within our various bubbles. I have no formal art education, and my style is humanistic, naive and experimental, I love it when others to use their vision as it comes to them even if they haven’t identified as creatives before.

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Q: How would you describe the need for inspiration for yourself and others?

A: It is as if there is this mechanism of a kind of collective ’breathing capacity’ or reflective space, the emotional safety we need to sit with atrocities or injustice or heaviness and that allows us to actively problem solve issues we are ourselves collectively impacted by. The ability as a collective to sit with heaviness and conflict long enough and with enough honesty and integrity for its resolve. Many aspects of our deepest and kindest nature need safe and mature communities to flourish. My impression is that a lot of millennials and Gen Z have struggled in the past years to find and collectively build these spaces as the emotional isolation or fragmentation of our time is so hard to put our fingers on. It is felt but not regularly expressed when it happens in real time. But I haven’t had a writing session with a creative of my generation in the past years without this subtle unsettling feeling being extremely relatable. Older generations back home often react to millennials and Gen Z feeling ’distant’ or easily distracted, rarely present. For many young adults today this fragmented time and constant shifting of attention is just normal life. Clinical psychology has no sole solution for it, as it is an issue dealt with collectively impacting the global social development of new generations. But if it harms us or our ability to connect, develop trust, stay with a difficult problem long enough with others that we get to solve it, we need to find ways to break free. This is how my writing started – I have to express this subtle, unsettling and big feeling I have, that is hard to pinpoint, and I need to do it alongside others. I want to use what I have learned to be as free and strong and responsible as I possibly can, and to both inspire and get inspired by others along the way.

Q: How does your background affect your artwork?

A: I come from a mixed Norwegian, Karelian Finnish, and Indigenous Sámi background, and I resonate deeply with a “third culture” experience. Karelian and Sámi people each went through heavy and violent assimilation processes in the last century to erase their heritage. Although this practice has subsided, I have related to a sense of otherness and a profound connection to nature since childhood. Gradually finding my own voice required beginning to accept that I will never be “Norwegian enough” or “Sámi enough” to satisfy cultural purists around me. A lot of people, perhaps even most, despite our different backgrounds and stories, carry a piece of themselves that feels like it will never fit. There are a tremendous force and potential for repair in releasing this pressure and giving it the time it takes to find one’s rhythm as it pours out and as we experience ourselves with the people around us. My poetry and artworks represent an attempt to do my own part. And after the last couple of years every encounter with another creative from wherever has just resonated so much that I couldn’t let the opportunity slip when Aura wrote back. People can be fantastic and warm and playful and strange in the best way possible all at once.

Aili additionally shared some of her poetry with us! These can be viewed in the flipbook below.