Marja Helander (b.1965) is a Finnish photographic and video artist. After originally training as a painter at the Lahti Institute of Fine Arts from 1988 to 1992, Helander then pursued her interest in photography and graduated from the University of Art and Design in Helsinki in 1999. She received an award in acknowledgement from the The Artists' Association of Finland in 2018.

Her earlier work explored her own identity between the Finnish and the Sámi culture, the Sámi being the indigenous people of Fennoscandia. Helander´s recent photographic work has focused on northern landscape in which dark views are portrayed without people. The accent of the work is on the postcolonial topics in the Sámi area, focusing particularly on the global mining industry. The encounter between nature and mankind is not harmonious, but destructive. On the other hand her video works are playful, exploring the contradiction between the traditional Sámi way of life and the modern society. Her recent short film Birds in the Earth won two prizes in Tampere Film Festival 2018 in Finland: The Main Prize in the under 30 minute category in the National Competition and the Risto Jarva Prize. It also won the Kent Monkman award for best experimental at imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival in Toronto, 2018.

Marja Helander has presented works in solo- and group-exhibitions both in Finland and abroad, with many shows in Scandinavia, and internationally further afield for example in Canada, National Gallery of Canada; UK, Southbank Centre, London; South Africa, Johannesburg Art Gallery; Spain, TEA Tenerife Espacio de las Artes, Santa Cruz, Tenerife; Colombia, Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogota; UK, Danielle Arnaud Contemporary Art and Mali, The 7th African Photography Biennial. She has works in various public collections in Finland and abroad.