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P H O T O P R O J E C T S
Ghosts of Gesture - Il movimento fantasma
Conflicts in Inner Dialog # 2
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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)
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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)
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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
Protestant Cemetery Rome
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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
Untitled (Mexico)
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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
Thy Eternal Summer # 2
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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
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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
 We 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
 Untitled
These single exposure images of Forest Room # 2 portray Finnish nature by creating multiple views of landscape. Straight photography, no image manipulation. |
Colorimetria
Yellow # 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
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.
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
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
Untitled
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 Untitled
Ongoing photography projects. Straight photography. |
Control to Each Woman's Body – Mask Series
 Figure 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)
A Woman Holding A Balance (after Vermeer)
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Personal bittersweet works with Dadaistic 'newspaper poetry'. |
Japan series
"Kimono Girls" Tokyo
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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"
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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
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