Riikka Hyvöne is a visual artist who explores notions of beauty with her expressive and thought-provoking paintings, which capture the construction of contemporary identity and the nature of its various representations. Hyvönen is distinguished for her sculptural painting series Roller Derby Kisses portraying colorful bruises on female skin. The bruised bottoms in her works began with a realization: “I wanted to capture the momentary marks and bruises from within the subculture of derby players. That's where my investigation of the psychology of bruises started, in an effort to portray them in a completely different light to mainstream culture." Hyvönen holds a BA of Fine Arts from Goldsmiths, University of London and an MFA from the Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki, Finland.