2000 & 11 self-portraits

The 2000 & 11 SELF-PORTRAITS capital-of-culture project, run by staff of the Fine Arts programme of the Arts Academy at Turku University of Applied Sciences, arrives in Helsinki. A hundred Turku residents made more than two thousand self-portraits in workshops run by Finnish and international artists. This exhibition comprising an enormous number of works is being shown in the Finnish Museum of Photography’s Process Space.

The self-portraits were made when, starting in September 2009, Turku residents participating in the workshops took up the pen, paper, brush and camera. The result is images of the real, living individuals that surround us, as well as an image of our times in capital-of-culture year 2011.

The exhibition at the Finnish Museum of Photography is showing a cross-section of the highlights of the 2000 & 11 SELF-PORTRAITS project and of the rich variety of self-portrait methods. “The self-portrait is powerfully present in our time. Self-portraits are written about, various self-portrait methods are being developed, the self-portrait is being studied, and contemporary artists are making self-portraits. The 2000 & 11 SELF-PORTRAITS project shows how a self-portrait can, for instance, be idealised, therapeutic, autobiographical, confessional or fictive. We can use self-portraits in many different ways. The self-portrait belongs to all of us,” says project curator Taina Erävaara. The leader of the project’s photography workshops, Vesa Aaltonen, sees potential for the self-portrait as an interpreter of long-term changes: “A self-portrait can be a tool for examining shifting identity.”

Press copies of Omakuva on jokaisen kuva (a self-portrait is everyone’s portrait) will be available at the press conference. This book deals with the methods used in the project and with various artist’s and researcher’s views on the self-portrait.

The 2000 & 11 SELF-PORTRAITS project has been curated by Taina Erävaara and run by staff of the Fine Arts programme of the Arts Academy at Turku University of Applied Sciences. The working-group members are Vesa Aaltonen, Pia Bartsch, Kaisa Lehto and Ilona Tanskanen.

Meet the artists on Sunday 5.2.2012 at 3pm.

Entrance to the exhibition is free.