Research Catalogue

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 is Creating a Character – Thinking and Communication through Analogue and Digital Costume Sketching from the point 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-led teaching. 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.

Her methodology 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, https://helda.helsinki.fi/handle/10138/163605
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