Iiu Susiraja: A style called a dead fish
Iiu Susiraja. Sausage cupid. 2019. Chromogenic print. 30 ½ x 30 ½” (77.5 x 77.5 cm) (framed). Courtesy the artist, Makasiini Contemporary, and Nino Mier Gallery.
Text: Nicole Miller
On view at MoMA PS1 is Iiu Susiraja: A style called a dead fish, a solo show of postmodern photographs and videos by Finnish artist Iiu Susiraja. The exhibition features Susiraja’s unabashedly bold self-portraits primarily shot in her home. She poses provocatively with a slew of everyday objects, such as an umbrella, an apple, and a pinwheel, baring her body with indifference to her audience’s disconcertion. Susiraja is tall and large, highlighting a female form not typically presented in art or celebrated in contemporary culture. She exposes our deeply ingrained feminine ideals and challenges us to deconstruct these inherently exclusive beauty standards.
Iiu Susiraja. Fountain. 2021. Chromogenic print. 38 x 26 in. (96.52 x 66 cm). Courtesy the artist, Makasiini Contemporary, and Nino Mier Gallery.
Throughout the series, Susiraja permits her audience access to her apartment in Turku, Finland. Despite her rather detached expressions, she undoubtedly shares her personal space and lifestyle, creating an unsettlingly intimate relationship between herself and her viewers. However, there is beauty and power in her giving more to her audience than she receives from them, and we cannot help but admire how fearlessly she reveals herself to the public, undressing literally and introspectively. In “Fountain (2021),” Susiraja lies flat on her back, her body sprawled on a mattress. A clear umbrella filled with yellow rubber ducks sits on her thighs, evoking a sense of absurdity. Assigning concrete meaning to the photograph would be futile, as the viewer's subjectivity reigns supreme. Yet we can agree that her eccentricity produces an intentional shock value as she dramatically expresses her presence.
Iiu Susiraja. Happy meal. 2011. Chromogenic print. 15 3/4 x 10 1/2″ (40 x 26.7 cm). Courtesy the artist, Makasiini Contemporary, and Nino Mier Gallery.
Susiraja embraces her playful nature and creative mind in the chromogenic print above. In “Happy meal (2011),” the camera cuts off Susiraja’s face, allowing viewers to expand their imagination on who they identify as the subject. She sits in a chair with a bitten apple in her right hand while her other hand lifts her dress to reveal apple peel scraps fashioned into a smiley face on her foot. The strange apple prop becomes a major character in the photograph, eerily clinging to her flesh with a smile, simultaneously repelling and enticing.
Iiu Susiraja. Pinwheel. 2019. Chromogenic print in artist’s frame. 15 7/8 x 21 1/2″ (40.3 x 54.6 cm) (framed). Courtesy the artist, Makasiini Contemporary, and Nino Mier Gallery.
Susiraja, partly clothed, faces away from the camera as she lies on her side in “Pinwheel (2019).” Turned towards the wall, she models with supposed disinterest, staring up at the ceiling and avoiding eye contact with the camera. However, we do not believe she is embarrassed to stare directly into the camera. Instead, she appears to have forgotten the camera entirely, emphasizing how mundane her position is, urging her audience to question why the image, or her physique, unnerves them. The precariously placed pinwheel complicates the photograph and is certainly not set in an ordinary location, providing the audience with a vision of what should be the true shock. The title directs us to this revelation as well, plainly pointing to what the audience is advised to contemplate.
