If You Are a Wound, I Am the Scar

In my ongoing series If You are a Wound, I am the Scar, I photograph myself in dialogue with the dresses that were left behind after my sister passed away. Through performative acts and self-portraiture I address the complex process of grief and healing. As a part of this self-recovery, I am leanin

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g to my family’s legacy of rug-making; the cutting of clothes of the deceased to weft. In my family what could not be used was remodelled, deconstructed and reconstructed, as a form of pragmatic exorcism; in the agrarian poverty there was no room to be sentimental. And by cutting, sewing and weaving I too am working through the dresses, actively shaping my story and taking back authority of my fate.

Essential in my work is the juxtaposition of a living body and the materiality of textiles. The images portray a play between seeing and touch, the form and the tactility. Using my body and the dresses of my sister I examine the relationship of memories and materialities. Can objects harbor emotions? And can one access these enclosed emotions by intervening with their materiality? In the past years these works have become a tool of finding my identity in the world. The combination of the female nude and the aggressive act of cutting have grown to represent liberation from far more than just grief.

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Typologies

Abstract & Fine Art

Projet suivant par Hilla Kurki