Emilia Moisio
VIERAALLA MAALLA (In a Foreign Place)
Emilia Moisio is a photographic artist whose research-based practice is investigating and questioning the role and functions of images in society and our lives. With a series of diverse, conceptually based photographic projects, she uses images as a tool to examine, analyse, develop, and articulate structured frameworks of thought. Her work critically investigates the social and cultural conventions of different areas of imaging and interpretation, and the persistent role of the relatively inconspicuous, historical assumptions of the inherent photographic objectivity, evidentiality, and truthfulness.
The on-going Vieraalla maalla (In a Foreign Place) project is induced by personal experiences of cultural misunderstandings that affect the way we perceive images and the world around us. In this fabricated outlandish world, traditional Finnish, Carelian and Sami customs and practices have been given a slightly odd twist. Not deviating beyond recognisability for recipients with the relevant cultural knowledge, the surreal scenes toy with proverbs, phrases and obsolete customs, rendering the images absurdly strange to a viewer unfamiliar with the cultural heritage. Drawing from personal experiences of cultural alienation and misunderstandings, and the artist’s Karelian origin, the work invites the recipients to strive to decipher and locate the depicted world, thereby denoting the arbitrary nature of our interpretations of images so easily taken for granted.