KirsiMarja Metsähuone

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       P H O T O   P R O J E C T S


       


Ghosts of Gesture - Il movimento fantasma

Picture
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

Picture
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

Picture
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

Picture
Protestant Cemetery Rome



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 various countries.



_Fragmenta Memoria: Here The Eternity Begins

Picture
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.

Pursuit of Happiness

Picture
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

Picture
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).

Forest Room series

PictureWe Have Grown This Way for Years - Photo montage
                 
                    
                    Photo montage and photograph series
                      
                    What shapes your identity? Where is your home?
 
                    Inspired by ancient family estate called Metsähuone
                    (Forest room) situated still today in the middle of a
                    deep forest next to a high, moss covered cliff in
                    Southern Finland but long a ago lost to non-relative
                    owners Forest Room series examines issues of
                    belonging, of defining one's dentity and origin.

                    Metsähuone identifies strongly with the meaning
                    of the place in the forest
as it's also her last name.

                    The project uses Forest Room as a metaphor.
                    Over the years it has become more of a concept,
                     a place of belonging rather than an actual place.
                   



Forest Room # 2

PictureUntitled


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


                  Straight photography, no image manipulation.

Colorimetria

PictureYellow # 2 (i.e. 100 x 100 cm)


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


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


Imaginary Portraits of Real People

PictureAids 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 – Female Body and Patriarchal Power

Picture


                       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.


                       "Political significance of the woman's body, the full spectrum
                        of power and powerlessness it represents...
"

                        Notes and Bibliography of The Project (© KirsiMarja Metsähuone)

Nature and Flower Series

Picture
Untitled
PictureUntitled


        Ongoing photography projects.


        Straight photography.



Control to Each Woman's Body – Mask Series

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




                        Masks: Photograms made into cut & paste collages

                        The so called 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 (i.e. cameraless photographs
                        created in the dark room and then made into unique cut
                        and paste collages).

                        The mask pieces have been shown in numerous
                         exhibitions mostly in the Unites States.


Collages (cut & paste)

Picture
A Woman Holding A Balance (after Vermeer)


          Personal bittersweet works with
          Dadaistic 'newspaper poetry'.


Japan series

Picture
"Kimono Girls" Tokyo


Color and b&w photographs from Japan.

Corpus Callosum: Photogram photo collages and mixed-media collages

Picture
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

Picture
Distance # 3, photogram photo collage
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