MEMBER FEATURE:

Our monthly Member Feature aims to showcase the talent that occupies our buildings and celebrate their work.

This month, we are excited to feature Rockella Space Member Pia Tuulia Cäbble, a multidisciplinary artist with a studio at Brown Bears Studios whose practice moves between painting, sculpture, altar-making, and architectural installation. Conceived in Denmark, born in Minneapolis, and raised in Finland to a Scandinavian mother and African-American father, Pia’s life has unfolded across continents—shaped by migration, performance, reinvention, and an ongoing search for belonging. From her early years as a nationally recognized dancer in Finland to a nomadic adulthood spent living in more than forty countries, her path has been defined by rupture, resilience, and spiritual inquiry.

After the pandemic dissolved her life in Puerto Rico, Pia relocated to New York and committed fully to painting, developing her first major body of work, Conversations with the Dead—a twelve-part portrait cycle accompanied by six altars and a monumental cathedral-like structure built to house them. Drawing on hair, mosaic, textiles, papier-mâché, and ritual materials, her works blur the boundaries between image and object, transforming the gallery into a sacred site of reflection.

At the core of Pia’s practice is an examination of oppression not as distant history, but as a living pattern sustained by comfort, avoidance, and inherited habits. Rather than positioning blame solely on institutions, her work calls viewers inward—toward personal accountability, ancestral dialogue, and the discomfort required for growth. The figures she paints, those lost to slavery, colonialism, genocide, and other systemic violences, are not rendered as symbols of despair, but as witnesses urging transformation.

Pia’s layered surfaces echo the arc of her own life: braided histories, fractured geographies, devotion and doubt, performance and prayer. Through immersive scale and tactile materiality, she invites viewers into a contemplative space where memory, ritual, and responsibility converge.

To learn more about the creatives who call Rockella Space home, head over to the People page for a full list of in-depth interviews.

Who are you and what do you do?

My name is Pia Tuulia Cäbble. I was raised in Finland by a Scandinavian mother and a Black American father who was a jazz musician. I grew up between cultural worlds — between Nordic austerity and Black improvisation — and that tension shaped how I see everything.

My childhood in Finland was feral and wild, surrounded by untamed nature. At sixteen, I left, and from there I lived and worked in thirteen countries — including India, Nigeria, Japan, Mexico, Colombia, and London, where I spent a decade. I became a mother at nineteen, so much of my travel and reinvention happened alongside raising my daughter.

I moved to New York three years ago with one clear intention: to consolidate all those lived experiences into serious, focused artistic work.

I am a multidisciplinary artist working across painting, sculpture, altar-making, and immersive architectural installation. My current body of work, Conversations with the Dead, examines ancestry, inherited systems, spiritual accountability, and the forces — both internal and external — that shape us.

How long have you been at Rockella Space, and what do you value most about having a studio at Brown Bears Studios—particularly in terms of community and connection with other artists in the building?

I’ve been at Rockella Space since January 2023.

My favorite thing is the scale — the height of the ceilings and the massive industrial windows. The natural light is everything. I honestly cannot imagine painting under artificial light. The way daylight moves across the surface changes how I understand the work. It feels alive.

The rawness of the space allows the work to expand physically. It doesn’t feel contained — and neither do I.

There is a beautiful core group of artists who have stayed long-term, and those relationships feel grounded and real.

David King,  Dapper Lu, Justine Ellis and so many more artists I’ve connected with creatively — we’ve begun collaborating and having deeper conversations about material and scale. There have been other collaborations forming as well. What I appreciate is that the building isn’t just a rental space; it’s a working ecosystem of serious artists. That creates a quiet but powerful community.

Tell us about your work. What inspires you?

Ancestry. Migration. Ritual. Systems of power. Personal responsibility.

I’m interested in the unseen forces we inherit — cultural narratives, trauma, resilience, mythology — and how we metabolize them. My work often operates as a mirror rather than an accusation.

I draw from African cosmology, Scandinavian minimalism, sacred architecture, and lived global experience. The central question is always: What are we carrying, and what are we willing to transform?

What does having a dedicated studio mean for your creative process? Has it changed how you approach your projects?

Having a dedicated studio has allowed me to merge my background in interior architecture with my fine art practice.

I don’t just make work in a space — I create work for the space. My studio doesn’t feel like a traditional workspace. It feels like a constructed world. A cathedral of sorts.

You don’t see clutter or the mechanics of production when you walk in. You encounter atmosphere. Light hits the gold mosaic tiles and flickers across the walls. The portraits feel as if they are watching you. There’s a candle wall built into the architecture. The space holds silence differently.

My training in interior design taught me how space shapes emotion. So now I build environments where the art and the architecture are inseparable. The studio has become both laboratory and exhibition — a living installation.

Without a dedicated space, I couldn’t construct that level of immersion.

Your work moves between painting, sculpture, altar-making, and architectural installation. At what point did you realize that painting alone wasn’t enough—that the work required physical space and structure to fully exist?

I have never only been a painter.

I began as a performer at nine years old, later studied interior architecture, designed hotels in Shanghai, Dubai, and London, worked in graphic design and fashion. My creative life has always been multidimensional.

When I moved to New York, I tried to “focus” strictly on painting — but I quickly realized that boxing myself into a rectangle was impossible. My ideas required structure, threshold, and spatial experience.

The work needed architecture. It needed sculptural framing. It needed viewers to physically enter the conversation.

You describe braided hair as a material that pulled you deeper into ancestry and ritual. What does hair hold for you symbolically and spiritually, and how has that material transformed your relationship to painting?

Hair holds lineage.

In many African traditions, hair is spiritual, relational, protective. Braiding is intimate and time-based. I began working with braids in costume design years ago, and eventually it migrated into my paintings.

Incorporating braided hair transformed the work from image into embodiment. It became tactile memory — ancestry made physical.

The cathedral structure housing Conversations with the Dead suggests both reverence and confrontation. What role does sacred architecture play in your practice, and how do you want viewers to physically experience that space?

Sacred architecture creates reverence — and confrontation.

The cathedral structure housing Conversations with the Dead is not religious in a doctrinal sense, but it demands attention. It establishes scale. It slows the body down.

I want viewers to feel held — but also slightly unsettled. Sacred space removes casual viewing. It invites responsibility.

You’ve spoken about discomfort as a kind of guardian angel. How has physical limitation—like breaking your dominant wrist—shifted your relationship to control, authorship, and vulnerability in the work?

Breaking my right wrist slowed me down at a moment when I felt on the brink of something significant.

Initially, it forced me into preparation rather than production. I had to sit with vision rather than execute it. But very quickly I refused to let the injury diminish the quality of the work. I returned to the studio within weeks.

What it ultimately taught me was trust. That even when something appears catastrophic, it does not dismantle your trajectory. It reinforced resilience.

It also clarified something important: I can fully commit to something without fearing the outcome. Injury, rejection, delay — none of those erase alignment.

The portraits in Conversations with the Dead address twelve different oppressive forces, yet you emphasize personal accountability over institutional blame. How do you balance honoring historical trauma while inviting introspection rather than accusation?

Blame immobilizes. Accountability transforms.

The twelve portraits in Conversations with the Dead address oppressive systems, but they are not accusations. They are mirrors. Each force exists externally and internally.

The work honors historical trauma while asking: Where does this live inside you?

Your detour into costume-making feels pivotal. In what ways do performance and embodiment still live inside your paintings and sculptural forms?

It’s returning.

In two recent self-portrait works, I feel the performer re-emerging — the dancer, the fighter, the softness and the aggression coexisting. That physical intelligence from years of movement is beginning to show up again in the paintings.

I suspect there is a larger body of work waiting where embodiment and painting merge more explicitly.

As an Afro-Scandinavian artist working in New York, how do migration and reinvention shape your visual language? Do you feel you are building a new lineage, reclaiming one, or both?

Migration is my foundation.

I grew up between cultures, and I have lived most of my life moving between countries and identities. For a long time, otherness felt safer than belonging. I was more comfortable being outside of categories than inside them.

I feel most at home in large cities like New York and London — places where reinvention is normal and hybridity is expected. That layered identity shows up visually in my work: restraint and ornament, minimalism and ritual, structure and improvisation.

I am both reclaiming lineage and constructing something new.

You mention that this is the first body of work you feel could stand in a museum “conceptually, visually, spiritually.” What changed internally that allowed you to claim that level of conviction?

Willpower — and mentorship.

Working alongside Fabiola Jean-Louis was pivotal. Seeing her create museum-caliber work up close made something click. I realized the capacity was already in me. I had simply stopped short before reaching that level of refinement.

Now I don’t stop short.

There’s a tension in your writing between ambition (becoming gallery-signed) and spiritual purpose. How do you reconcile the art world’s systems of validation with the sacred urgency of your subject matter?

One of the virtues I meditate on is temperance — balancing material needs with spiritual aims.

Ambition is not separate from spirituality. If the work carries urgency, it deserves visibility. The question is always: Why do I want this? What does it serve beyond ego?

Material success must be aligned with spiritual integrity. Otherwise, it collapses.

If your ancestors are “whispering” through this work, what do you hope they’re saying to viewers who step into the cathedral space—and what do you hope those viewers do differently when they leave?

I hope they question their inherited narratives.

I want the work to create cracks in the foundation of unexamined beliefs — about history, power, allyship, identity. Not to shame, but to provoke research and deeper inquiry.

If someone leaves curious enough to investigate what they thought they already knew, the work has done its job.

If you were to invite anyone alive or dead to a dinner party, who would be on your guest list?

Isaac Newton, Manly P. Hall, Paulo Coelho, Fred Armisen, and Atsuko Okatsuka.

Mysticism, science, comedy, and philosophy in one room — that’s my ideal collision.

What advice would you give to artists with similar backgrounds to yours who are thinking about moving to New York City and pursuing a life in the art world?

Come with stamina.

New York sharpens you. It will not hand you anything. Build community early. Understand the business side of art. Protect your spirit. And make work that cannot be ignored.

What projects/exhibitions have you got coming up?

I currently have a painting on view in a group exhibition at the Sitar Arts Center in Washington, D.C., on view through March 14.

Beginning March 24 through the end of April, I will be exhibiting in a group show at the Edward Hopper House Museum.

I am also in residency during March and April at Time to Be Happy Gallery in SoHo, where I will be hosting workshops, events, and open studios.

Additionally, I will be hosting studio visits and curated open studio experiences at Brown Bears Studios throughout April and May as I continue developing Conversations with the Dead.

Where can people see your work in IRL or online, and how can people contact you for a studio visit and/or therapy session?

Website: www.pialoveart.com

Instagram: @pialoveart

Studio visits by appointment: piatuuliacabble@gmail.com

Currently working out of Brown Bears Studios, Brooklyn.