This exhibition is an exploration of the strict gender roles embedded within historical anatomical imagery through the anatomical Venus, a Venus-like life-size wax figure from the 18th century. Johanna Naukkarinen uses photography, digital drawing, and collage to examine this phenomenon intersecting the history of art and medicine. To showcase the absurdity of gender roles in the history of anatomy, she brings together various imageries from different contexts in an analytical and playful way.
The anatomical Venus wax figures were first made in Italy during the 18th century. These figures were used for teaching anatomy to the general public and were moulded into the form inspired by the portrayal of Venus in the visual arts. They were decorated with pearls, long human hair, and eyelashes. The figures were placed to lie on silk, with exposed guts and sensuous expressions on their faces. The beauty of the Venuses was meant to distract people from thinking about death while learning anatomy.
As a medical object the anatomical Venus reflects the blatant power relations in the history of medicine. The exhibition widens to trace the common pictorial language of visual arts and the history of medicine. Historical anatomical imagery was meant to take people to the core of humanity, but to the bodies assigned as female they leave only the role of a passive nude painting.
The photography series Body Worlds: The Anatomical Venus (with Tiia Kasurinen) reimagines the Body Worlds exhibition by putting the anatomical Venus into poses that only bodies assigned as male were allowed to take in the history of art and medicine. The series is made in collaboration with dance artist Tiia Kasurinen.
The two sets of works Studies on Science and the Feminine Figure and Lying Down trace the passive characters similar to the anatomical Venus common in the various eras and contexts. The photography series They Used to Wear Pearls examines the combination of beauty and the grotesque by using the embellishments from the anatomical Venus on contemporary neutral anatomical models.
This exhibition has been supported by the Alfred Kordelin Foundation, Arts Promotion Centre Finland, Turku Art Society and Turku cultural board.
The contemporary anatomical has been photographed in Turku Vocational Institute and the real anatomical Venus has been photographed in Palazzo Poggi Museum in Bologna.
My image on the cover of Maria Gainza’s novel ”Schwarzlicht”
Published on 17.8.2023. Maria Gainzas Portrait of an Unknown Lady in German.
Published by Wagenbach Verlag
Translated from the Spanish by Peter Kultzen
Cover image "Untitled, 2015" by me
Cover design by Julie August
Anatomical Venus / Galleria Rajatila, Tampere / 13.-30.8.2022
Anatomical Venus / GalleriA, Kuopio / 9.9-6.11.2022
This exhibition is an exploration of the strict gender roles embedded within historical anatomical imagery through the anatomical Venus, a Venus-like life-size wax figure from the 18th century. Johanna Naukkarinen uses photography, digital drawing, and collage to examine this phenomenon intersecting the history of art and medicine. To showcase the absurdity of gender roles in the history of anatomy, she brings together various imageries from different contexts in an analytical and playful way.
The anatomical Venus wax figures were first made in Italy during the 18th century. These figures were used for teaching anatomy to the general public and were moulded into the form inspired by the portrayal of Venus in the visual arts. They were decorated with pearls, long human hair, and eyelashes. The figures were placed to lie on silk, with exposed guts and sensuous expressions on their faces. The beauty of the Venuses was meant to distract people from thinking about death while learning anatomy.
As a medical object the anatomical Venus reflects the blatant power relations in the history of medicine. The exhibition widens to trace the common pictorial language of visual arts and the history of medicine. Historical anatomical imagery was meant to take people to the core of humanity, but to the bodies assigned as female they leave only the role of a passive nude painting.
The photography series Body Worlds: The Anatomical Venus (with Tiia Kasurinen) reimagines the Body Worlds exhibition by putting the anatomical Venus into poses that only bodies assigned as male were allowed to take in the history of art and medicine. The series is made in collaboration with dance artist Tiia Kasurinen.
The two sets of works Studies on Science and the Feminine Figure and Lying Down trace the passive characters similar to the anatomical Venus common in the various eras and contexts.
This exhibition has been supported by the Alfred Kordelin Foundation, Arts Promotion Centre Finland, Turku Art Society and Turku cultural board.
The contemporary anatomical has been photographed in Turku Vocational Institute and the real anatomical Venus has been photographed in Palazzo Poggi Museum in Bologna.
My image on the cover of Maria Gainza’s novel ”Portrait of an Unknown Lady”
Coming up on 3/3/2022. A new novel by an Argentinian art critic and writer Maria Gainza.
Published by VINTAGE at Penguin Random House
Translated from the Spanish by Thomas Bunstead
Cover image "Untitled, 2015" by me
Cover design by Suzanne Dean
The story caption:
”At a hotel in Buenos Aires, a woman checks in under a pseudonym. She wears a black fur shawl and has no luggage. She is alone.
Over the coming days and nights, she tells a story, which begins with a secret shared in a local bath house, revealing art forgery and fraud on a dazzling scale. At its heart is an enigmatic genius who for years forged portraits of the city's elite, before disappearing without trace. It is a story of influence and intrigue, in which nothing is as it seems. We're not to expect 'names, numbers or dates', she cautions, but a more subtle kind of reckoning...
Told in a mordant, irresistible voice and full of sharp surprises, Portrait of an Unknown Lady is a captivating enquiry into what we mean by 'authenticity', in life as in art. At once poised and capricious, elegant and bold, it is a thrilling exploration of the relationships between what is lived, what is told, what is remembered, and what is real.”
Find out more HERE!
The 97th Annual Exhibition of the Turku Artist’s Assosiation, Kunsthalle Turku / 12.11-19.12.21
Takin part in the 97th Annual Exhibition of the Turku Artist’s Assosiation in Kunsthalle Turku. My photography series They Used to Wear Pearls can be seen in Kunstahalle Turku in 12.11-19.12.2021!
Blind Spots project in Hansakortteli / 8.11.- 14.11.2021
I was part of Ponsia´s pilot project that brings contemporary art into empty commercial spaces in Turku. My week showcasing my work in Hansakortteli took place in 8.11-14.11.2021.
Anatomical Venus / Yö Galleria, Helsinki / 2-19.9.2021
This exhibition is an exploration of the strict gender roles embedded within historical anatomical imagery through the anatomical Venus, a Venus-like life-size wax figure from the 18th century. Johanna Naukkarinen uses photography, digital drawing, and image montage to examine this phenomenon intersecting the history of art and medicine. To showcase the absurdity of gender roles in the history of anatomy, she brings together various imageries from different contexts in an analytical and playful way.
The anatomical Venus wax figures were first made in Italy during the 18th century. These figures were used for teaching anatomy to the general public and were moulded into the form inspired by the portrayal of Venus in the visual arts. They were decorated with pearls, long human hair, and eyelashes. The figures were placed to lie on silk, with exposed guts and sensuous expressions on their faces. The beauty of the Venuses was meant to distract people from thinking about death while learning anatomy.
As a medical object the anatomical Venus reflects the blatant power relations in the history of medicine. The exhibition widens to trace the common pictorial language of visual arts and the history of medicine. Historical anatomical imagery was meant to take people to the core of humanity, but to the bodies assigned as female they leave only the role of a passive nude painting.
The photography series Body Worlds: The Anatomical Venus (with Tiia Kasurinen) reimagines the Body Worlds exhibition by putting the anatomical Venus into poses that only bodies assigned as male were allowed to take in the history of art and medicine. The series is made in collaboration with dance artist Tiia Kasurinen.
The two sets of works Studies on Science and the Feminine Figure and Lying Down trace the passive characters similar to the anatomical Venus common in the various eras and contexts. The photography series They Used to Wear Pearls examines the combination of beauty and the grotesque by using the embellishments from the anatomical Venus on contemporary neutral anatomical models.
This exhibition has been supported by the Alfred Kordelin Foundation, Arts Promotion Centre Finland, and the Turku Art Society.
The new project about the Anatomical Venus
Since last summer I have been diving deeper into the history of medicine and working on a new exhibition about the theme of the Anatomical Venus. The Anatomical Venuses were 18th century wax models made to teach anatomy for general public. The Venuses were created to look like young beautiful women with realistic looking organs. They were also decorated with pearls, silk and human hair. As written by the author Joanna Ebenstein in her book, The Anatomical Venus (2016), the beauty of the Anatomical Venus was meant to distract people from the idea of death while teaching the wonders of human body.
I will approach the theme with photography, photomontage and digital drawing to connect the Anatomical Venus to more contemporary images. I will also critically reflect why even as a medical wax model, a figure made to represent a woman, needs to offer the spectator an aesthetic spectacle.
The project has been supported by Arts Promotion Centre Finland, Turku Art Society and Kordelin Foundation.
The images have been taken in Turku Vocational Institute.
Winter Salon 2020,
a group exhibition of Turku Artist's Association in Kunsthalle Turku 13.11-20.12.2020
I'm taking part in Turku Artist's Association's newest group show Winter Salon 2020. The exhibition is a collection of a wide range of visual artist's and the theme has been inspired by the historical Parisian art salon tradition.
Find the exhibition in the small gallery of Turku Kunsthalle 13.11-20.12.2020.
Museum of Hysteria / Kouta-galleria, Kouvola / 30.6-26.7.2020
Museum of Hysteria / Kouta-galleria 30.6-26.7.2020
The works featured in the Museum of Hysteria exhibition examine a 19th century medical phenomenon, hysteria, through photography, an image montage, digital drawing and a sculptural installation. Hysteria was a medical phenomenon that brought together a variety of symptoms, mainly affecting women, into an illness concept that inspired both science and art and was used for maintaining strict gender norms. Johanna Naukkarinen examines the images of hysteria through the perspective of scientific gaze and draws a parallel between hysteria images and contemporary images of women.
The works play with the gendered power structures of the gaze and the presence of the scientific gaze in non-scientific images. At the core of the works are drawings created in connection with examinations at the 19th century Parisian hospital La Salpêtrière, used for categorizing the symptoms of hysteria and the women suffering from these symptoms. Naukkarinen uses hysteria as a mirror for more modern imageries and, through them, asks questions about the unchanging imageries of women.
The installation Causes of Hysteria (2019) illustrates, in the form of small crystal sculptures, those everyday reasons that were believed to drive women to hysteria in the 19th century and make them the objects of medical gaze. The series Studies on Science and the Feminine Figure (2015–2019) draws a parallel between historical drawings and real commercial images of women, in the form of fictitious study boards.
The name Museum of Hysteria refers to the exhibition as if it was a collection of hysteria artifacts in a museum. It also refers to a real museum-like space that, as part of the Salpêtrière hysteria hospital, featured a collection of works portraying hysterical women. Created using different artistic methods, the works were showcased to people visiting the hospital. Naukkarinen’s works play with scientific esthetics, yet seeking to reduce and ironize the charm of hysteria.
Johanna Naukkarinen (b. 1988) is a Turku-based visual artist and photographer. She has worked with themes related to hysteria using different techniques since 2015. She graduated in photography from the Arts Academy at the Turku University of Applied Sciences and earned a Master of Arts degree in media studies from the University of Turku. Museum of Hysteria is a collection of works from the artist’s two earlier solo exhibitions, held at the Turku Art Museum’s Studio and at B-galleria. Naukkarinen’s works are included in the collections of the Turku Art Museum as well as in private collections.
The exhibition has been supported by the Turku Cultural Committee and Arts Promotion Centre Finland.
Wiurila 2020 Summer Exhibition / Wiurila Manor, Halikko / 12.6-30.8.2020
On the front: my work Barbie Objects, 2020. On the back: HilmaKollektiivi.
I'm taking part in Wiurila 2020 Summer Exhibition in Wiurila Manor. The exhibition is the largest contemporary art exhibition in Southwest Finland and will be open for public at 12.6-30.8.2020.
Album cover for Pesso
My photograph "Specimen" as a album cover for a Finnish rap artist Pesso. The album will be released on 27th of March 2020.
Museum of Hysteria / Galleria Huuto, Helsinki / 10.1-2.2.2020
Museum of Hysteria / Galleria Huuto 10.1-2.2.2020
The works featured in the Museum of Hysteria exhibition examine a 19th century medical phenomenon, hysteria, through photography, an image montage, digital drawing and a sculptural installation. Hysteria was a medical phenomenon that brought together a variety of symptoms, mainly affecting women, into an illness concept that inspired both science and art and was used for maintaining strict gender norms. Johanna Naukkarinen examines the images of hysteria through the perspective of scientific gaze and draws a parallel between hysteria images and contemporary images of women.
The works play with the gendered power structures of the gaze and the presence of the scientific gaze in non-scientific images. At the core of the works are drawings created in connection with examinations at the 19th century Parisian hospital La Salpêtrière, used for categorizing the symptoms of hysteria and the women suffering from these symptoms. Naukkarinen uses hysteria as a mirror for more modern imageries and, through them, asks questions about the unchanging imageries of women.
The series Teaching Photography with Hysterics (2019) challenges the seemingly neutral way old photography guidebooks portray women as the objects of photographs. The women and items used as objects in teaching illustrations have been replaced by 19th century hysteria drawings that are part of the unethical history of the development of photographic technology. The installation Causes of Hysteria (2019) illustrates, in the form of small crystal sculptures, those everyday reasons that were believed to drive women to hysteria in the 19th century and make them the objects of medical gaze. The series Studies on Science and the Feminine Figure (2015–2019) draws a parallel between historical drawings and real commercial images of women, in the form of fictitious study boards.
The name Museum of Hysteria refers to the exhibition as if it was a collection of hysteria artifacts in a museum. It also refers to a real museum-like space that, as part of the Salpêtrière hysteria hospital, featured a collection of works portraying hysterical women. Created using different artistic methods, the works were showcased to people visiting the hospital. Naukkarinen’s works play with scientific esthetics, yet seeking to reduce and ironize the charm of hysteria.
Johanna Naukkarinen (b. 1988) is a Turku-based visual artist and photographer. She has worked with themes related to hysteria using different techniques since 2015. She graduated in photography from the Arts Academy at the Turku University of Applied Sciences and earned a Master of Arts degree in media studies from the University of Turku. Museum of Hysteria is a collection of works from the artist’s two earlier solo exhibitions, held at the Turku Art Museum’s Studio and at B-galleria. Naukkarinen’s works are included in the collections of the Turku Art Museum as well as in private collections.
The exhibition has been supported by the Turku Cultural Committee and Arts Promotion Centre Finland.
Check out Galleria Huuto HERE!
Exhibition mentinoed in HELSINGIN SANOMAT and NY TID.
Järjestelmäkamerakurssit kevät 2020
Tervetuloa kevään järjestelmäkamerakursseilleni Suomen valokuvataiteen museolle! Kursseillani havainnollistan järjestelmäkameran peruskäyttöä luoviin ratkaisuihin innostaen. Opi säännöt, jotta voit rikkoa niitä!
Kursseilla opitaan omaa kameraa käyttäen, pieniä tehtäviä tehden. Mukaan saa myös järjestelmäkameran käytön perusohjeet, joiden avulla opittuja asioita voi harjoitella kurssin jälkeen.
Kurssit painottavat oman taiteellisen ilmaisun etsintää ja kykyjä käyttää tekniikkaa luovasti. Tyhmiä kysymyksiä tai yhtä oikeaa valokuvaamisen tapaa ei ole.
Järkkäri Haltuun Suomen valokuvataiteen museolla:
25.1, 22.2, 14.3, 25.4, 16.5, 6.6
Järkkäri 2 valokuvataiteen museolla:
23.1, 15.3, 26.4, 17.5, 7.6
Osallistu Valokuvataiteen museon kurssipäiviin TÄÄLLÄ.
Published in Swarm Mag
My works about hysteria published in a Prague based cultural and art-oriented e-zine Swarm Mag. Check the magazine and the feature edited by Marketa Kosinova HERE.
Published in Funny Looking Dog Quarterly Issue 3: Fall 2019
Some of my Images made in Studio Faire with the residency dog Dougie have been published in a Chicago based literary magazine Funny Looking Dog Quarterly.
Check them out HERE!
The 95th Annual Exhibition of the Turku Artist’s Assosiation, Kunsthalle Turku
On the front: my work Causes of Hysteria (2019). On the back: Riemu (2019) by Henna Aho.
Coming up next: The 95th Annual Exhibition of the Turku Artist’s Assosiation in Kunsthalle Turku. My installation series Causes of Hysteria can be seen in Kunstahalle Turku in 1.11-8.12. Opening at 31.10!
3-week residency in Studio Faire, Nerac SW France, July 2019
I spent 3 amazing weeks in an artist residency Studio Faire situated in the lovely small-town of Nérac in South-West France.
In the beautiful 19th century house I continued working on my current projects on hysteria and came back home with new experiments and new ideas based on local stories. And of course with memories of the lovely people I met and the amazing places I saw.
My trip was made possible by Arts Promotion Centre Finland's mobility grant.
More info about Studio Faire in HERE.
Thank you everyone who visited my exhibition Meet Augustine (17.4-19.5.2019) and my lecture about hysteria and art on 11th of May!
Images by Ching Lam Yeung and Laura Jalava
Thank you everyone who visited my exhibition Meet Augustine and my lecture about hysteria and art on 11th of May in B-galleria.
As part of my newest exhibition I held a lecture on hysteria and art based on my master's thesis The Gender Power Relations of Photographic Gaze in the 19th Century Hysteria Images and American Apparel Ads.
I was so thrilled to share some information about the close relationship of hysteria and art history and the artistic methods of 19th century medical science. I hope to have the lecture sometime again as part of my future art projects.
Meet Augustine / B-galleria / 17.4.-19.5. 2019
Meet Augustine / B-galleria 17.4.-19.5.2019
Meet Augustine presents a new set of works of Johanna Naukkarinen. The exhibition focuses on scientific gaze and the history and power relations of western image culture. The name of the exhibition is a hybrid of two important themes of Naukkarinen’s artistic practise. Augustine was the most famous hysteric of the 19th century and the face of the hysteria imagery. The exhibition invites the viewer to meet her like the “has-been” clothing brand American Apparel’s notorious ads invite to meet their models.
Convulsions, poses and the ways that the subjects of the images are being described are the central observations in the artworks where Naukkarinen reflects and speculates the presence of the scientific gaze in everyday images.
With her playful works Naukkarinen comments the gender power relations by bringing together the historical and contemporary imageries of women. Meet Augustine presents works that have taken their form in photomontages, crystal sculptures and digital drawings. The uniting element between the pieces are the hysteria images made in 19th century Paris. These images link together medical history and art history. Even though Naukkarinen has a fine art photography degree from Turku Arts Academy, she has widened her practise from photography to other mediums. The inspiration behind her work still often focuses on criticising and researching the photographic image culture.
The series Teaching Photography with Hysterics (2019) aims to break the “neutrality” of how the old camera guidebooks present women as the main subjects of photography. In the series Naukkarinen replaces the women in the guide drawings with 19th century drawings of hysterics. With small crystal sculptures the installation series Causes of Hysteria (2019) illustrates the everyday delights that were believed to cause women hysteria in the 19th century and make them objects of science and surveillance.
Naukkarinen exhibited her graduation exhibition, Grand Hysteria, in Turku Art Museum Studio in spring 2016. It also addressed the image culture of hysteria and presented her on-going working method: the comparison between similarities of the 19th century hysteria images and the contemporary fashion images. In the summer 2018 Naukkarinen finished her MA degree in the media studies department of Turku University and dove into the deeper meanings of the topic mentioned above in her master’s thesis The Gender Power Relations of Photographic Gaze in the 19th Century Hysteria Images and American Apparel Ads.
With her works Naukkarinen references to the to the structures of the history of art and photography, but she also trifles and speculates with the surprising possibilities of the emergence of scientific gaze in the western image culture.
B-ZINE 2-7/19 and My Upcoming Exhibition
I wrote about the ideas behind my upcoming exhibition in B-galleria's newest B-ZINE publication. The exhibition is about scientific gaze and the heritage of hysteria images. I will be showing my new works in B-galleria on 17.04-19.05.2019.
You can read the newest B-ZINE (in Finnish) HERE
Check out B-galleria HERE
The winner of FotoRoom's #FotoRoomOPEN Vasli Souza edition in single image category
My work was announced as the winner of #FotoRoomOPEN single image chosen by Fotogalleri Vasli Souza. So happy and honored!
FotoRoom
Vasli Souza
Everything is Important - Art Exhibition by Recover Laboratory, public air-raid shelter in Meilahti, Helsinki 9-27.1.2019
As Recover Laboratory's circus labyrinth is over, the space has turned into an art exhibition curated by visual artist and Recover Laboratory's co-director Sofi Häkkinen. The works deal with themes of humanity and being a human. You can visit the public air-raid shelter in Meilahti, Helsinki, till 27th of January.
Collection exhibition: Four elements, Turku Art Museum, 23.11.2018–
My work Untitled (2015) is being exhibited as part of the new collection exhibition in Turku Art Museum.
The museum describes the exhibition:
"The four classical elements set the tone for the new collection exhibition in the upstairs galleries at Turku Art Museum. Presenting classical and contemporary art side by side, the exhibition offers new perspectives both on iconic works of Finnish art and on recent acquisitions. The show comprises nearly a hundred works by established artists, most of them Finnish, in a variety of media ranging from painting to sculpture, from assemblage to photography and video."
I'm so honored to be part of it.
Comissions
I also work with commissions. Contact me for collaborations: mari.johanna.naukkarinen@gmail.com
See my work portfolio HERE.
Image from a photoshoot with jewellery brand Karina.
Recover Laboratory: Underneath // Art & Circus Labyrinth 29.9-20.12.2018
I am exhibiting some of my works in an Art & Circus Labyrinth that will take place in Helsinki during the autumn 2018.
Info, timetables and tickets can be found HERE.
Antti Kokkomäki & Tammikuunlapset - II
My album art for a Finnish folk rock group Antti Kokkomäki & Tammikuun lapset. I created photo montages from vintage slides that I found on a flea market in Dublin.
Find their music:
anttikokkomaki.com
Spotify
Group exhibition, Out of Line at Köttinspektionen, Uppsala.
Participating in a group exhibition that is presenting contemporary drawing. Out of Line at Köttinspektionen 20.5-4.6, Uppsala, Sweden.
Featured artist in a Finnish Gender Studies magazine 4/2016
SUURI HYSTERIA / GRAND HYSTERIA, 1.4-8.5.2016 Turku Art Museum, Studio
Pictures from my graduation exhibition Suuri Hysteria / Grand Hysteria 1.4-8.5.2016 in Turku Art Museum, Studio.
