MARKET 201517.-19.4.2015 / Liljevalchs konsthall

At MARKET Galleria Heino presents a solo show by photographer Elina Brotherus with her newest series of photographs titled 12 ans après (12 Years Later).

In 1999 an European organization that promotes the emergence of young artists (Pépinières européennes pour jeunes artistes) selected Elina Brotherus as the artist-in-residence for the Musée Nicéphore Niépce located in Chalon-sur-Saône, France. During her stay there, Brotherus created her seminal series of photographs called Suites françaises (French Suites). The series consists of images in which she teaches herself French with the help of Post-it stickers. It deals with living in a foreign country and absorbing its culture and visual environment. The residency was a turning point in her life. It enabled Brotherus subsequently to live and work in France as well as in her native Finland.

In 2011 Brotherus was again invited to Chalon-sur-Saône, this time to teach at a workshop in a local high school. She stayed in the same monastery guesthouse as before. She photographed many of the same places that she had explored visually twelve years earlier. The result was a series called 12 ans après (12 Years Later) in which her new images form a poignant dialogue with the older photos. It also shows the evolution, for instance, of her use of text in photos. The older photos have a Post-it with often just one word, whereas the new pictures may contain many stickers that form an extended narrative. In the series 12 ans après, the artist finds herself in a mid-life point. What she is living now was to her younger self an unknown future. She looks back at her life at the age of 40. The passage of time is made concretely visible.

 

Elina Brotherus (b. 1972) lives and works in Helsinki, Finland, and Avallon, France.

Brotherus is one of Finland´s internationally most acclaimed photographers and video artists. Her early works were autobiographical. Since then, she has focused on depicting people in landscapes and exploring the relationship between artist and model. She was awarded the State Prize for Photography in 2008, the Prix Niépce in France in 2005, the Carnegie Art Award young artist scholarship in 2003 and the Fotofinlandia Prize in 2001.