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Ghosts of Gesture - Il movimento fantasma

Conflicts in Inner Dialog # 2

The performative Ghosts of Gesture explores movement in
frozen time, imaginary memories and play of identities.

Metsähuone performs a dual role of a photographer and a
person being photographed. The project mirrors the established
gestures through which gender identity is represented and with
which gender is reproduced and recognized.

Ongoing series started in Italy in 2009.

Ghosts of Gesture also includes a short experimental film.

Urban Non-Stories

Untitled (Painted mouth)

The series documents the unfinished, unpredictable and
fragmented dialog born out of the interaction between people
and the urban environment in Athens, Rome, Nice, Berlin,
Venice, Florence, Madrid, Warsaw, Oaxaca...

Accidental non-stories are created out of random sites of
cultural memory. Layered and obscure or self-evident every
day imagery one sees but doesn't notice.

Ongoing photography and moving image project.

Entirely photo-based video RoaM is part of the project.

Urban Non-Stories: Camera di morte – pace – felicità

Untitled (Torn eyes)

The photographs in the series - contemporary decollages
in a way - are extreme close-ups of torn poster fragments
and wall surfaces in Rome.

The walls and posters are being slowly deteriorated by
time, weather conditions and people. Any passer-by can
participate in the everyday tearing ritual that can be seen
as a spontaneous urban performance. The sun, humidity
and air pollution have furthered the decomposing process.

Camera di morte – pace – felicità

Fragmenta Memoria

Untitled (Venice)

The series contemplates memory and memories: the ability
to remember, to forget and the meaning of (mental) images
as memories. The project invites interpretations on how to
remember and who are the ones that are forgotten.

To photograph as a way of remembering and attempting
to understand the past.

"We exist as long as somebody remembers us and cease
to exist when we are forgotten". 


Ongoing photography and moving image project in cemeteries
in several countries.

_Fragmenta Memoria: Here The Eternity Begins

Untitled (Mexico)

The collage-like photos of Aquí la eternidad empieza
- Here The Eternity Begins are photographed in
cemeteries in Southern Mexico.

There are multitude of translucent and opaque layers
and reflections building up in the photos through which
something inexplicable on one hand and comforting and
touching on the other can be traced.


Straight photography, no image manipulation.

Colorimetria

Orange # 1 (100 x 100 cm)

Purely about color and form, planes, shapes and surfaces.


Photographs, collages, photo-based video (work in progress)
shot in Italy.

Happiness

Thy Eternal Summer # 2

The project delves into the idea of happiness and it's
opposite through self-portrait photographs and moving
image portraits trying to capture the moments, pursuits
and memories associated with those emotions.

The Happiness project includes photographs, collages,
experimental short films such as Thy Eternal Summer,
Core Memory and You Can't Eat That!.

Shot in Finland.

Inner Window: Portraits of The Unreal

MeiMei

Interference - distortion - distraction, interrupted image,
disappearing image, fluctuation in electrical signal, bad
digital reception, anomalous reception, random patterns,
audible noise...

The series has evolved around the problems of digital broad-
casting and the intentionally distorted signal of the blocked
channels which all create fascinating, fluctuating (or static &
trembling) visual imagery unlike anything in the real world.

Ongoing. Photographs and moving image (work in progress).

Nature series

Untitled

Ongoing photography project.


Straight photography.

Flower series

Untitled

Ongoing photography project.


Straight photography.

Forest Room 2

Untitled

These single exposure images of Forest Room 2 portray
ordinary Finnish nature by creating multiple views of
landscape.


Straight photography, no image manipulation.

Forest Room

We Have Grown This Way for Years

What shapes your identity? Where is your home?

Inspired by ancient family estate called Metsähuone
(Forestroom) situated still today in the middle of deep
forest in southern Finland but long a ago lost to non-relative
owners Forest Room series examines issues of belonging,
of re-finding and defining one's identity and origin.

The project uses forest as a metaphor for examining the
meaning of home and identity in transit.

Forest Room

Imaginary Portraits of Real People

Aids Patient

The works are based on documentary interviews of eight
Finnish individuals - transgender, aids patient, pregnant woman,
plastic surgery clinic owner, mental health patient, buddhist monk,
person sentenced to prison for homicide and holistic doctor -
representing extremes in their relation to body and mind.

The complementary color, life size photo collages portray less the
actual individuals but more the archtypal human beings in social
situations and different roles in which sexuality, body and
circumstances can lock people into.

In Sickness and Health – The Female Body and Patriarchal Power

Eye Goddess - Women's sexuality

In Sickness and Health deals with issues of health and
sickness in relation to femininity, gender roles and gender
differences.

The aim of the project is to explore through art the political
significance of the science of medicine, power mechanisms
of the society and the concepts of health and sickness.

The project includes photographic collages as well as a web
project "In Sickness and Health – The Female Body and
Patriarchal Power" as part of a collaboration with Lily Díaz
and Hanna Holm titled "Illness and Representation".
1998-1999 presented at ISEA98, International Symposium
on Electronic Arts.

Collages (cut & paste)

A Woman Holding A Balance (after Vermeer)

Personal bittersweet works with dadaistic 'newspaper poetry'.

Mask Series: photograms made into cut & paste collages

Figure and Her Wings (185 x 100 x 1.5 cm)

The Mask works study the concept of women and power
from different angles: fight for the right to bodily self-
determination, transitional stages, reproduction related
themes, bodily memory, identity and body image issues.

The works address the hidden values of media and
advertising industry imagery, the ways it manipulates and
conditions self-image while maintaining stereotypes.

The Mask images are slightly 3-dimensional cut & paste
photo collage photograms. The mask pieces have been
shown in numerous exhibitions in the Unites States.

Japan series

"Kimono Girls" Tokyo

Color and b&w photographs from Japan.

Corpus Callosum: Photogram photo collages and mixed-media collages

Non Sum Qualis Eram - "I am not that which I was before"

Corpus callosum (in latin "tough body")

The brain's right and left hemisphere are connected by corpus
callosum which facilitates communication between the two
sides of the brain. It transfers sensory, motor and cognitive
information between the brain hemispheres.

Photogram photo collage works.

Individual photogram works and miscellaneous images

Distance # 3, photogram photo collage