Emma Sarpaniemi
Two Ways To Carry A Cauliflower

Exhibition Details

Two Ways to Carry a Cauliflower is a performative photography series exploring women’s self-portraiture through play. To free the subject and the gaze from certain patriarchal ideals of femininity, the subject depicted in the images is portrayed playfully and tenderly as a woman who behaves, looks, and performs on her terms and rules.

Often, playfulness can be perceived as naivety when associated with a female artist. Emma Sarpaniemi, however, uses it as a source of power. Through play, she envisions possibilities for new ways of existence and influence. In her universe, identity, reality, and imagination intertwine. Sarpaniemi is not creating an alter ego or distancing herself from the character. Instead, she creates an honest representation of her identity and reality where she feels she can recognize herself.

Sarpaniemi stages the scenes, selects the clothes, and designs the self-portraits herself. The starting point is often an object or a piece of clothing found at a flea market, from which the artist begins to construct a photograph. She is interested in the unpredictability that comes from everyday objects, used to create contradictions and alternative symbolic meanings.

The photographic series comprises a combination of home studio portraits as well as scenes captured in domestic settings and outside. Between public and private space, it presents moments of intimacy and play, where the viewer is brought closer to the subject’s world and imagination.