"Subtle yet incandescent rage shimmers everywhere in Susiraja’s output. It’s just one of the many reasons why her art—so mesmerizing, terrorizing, gnarly, monstrous—is incredibly beautiful." –Alex Jovanovich, Artforum
Over the past 15 years, Iiu Susiraja has taken photographs of herself in domestic settings, most often in her home in Turku, Finland. Simultaneously seductive, abject, stylized and vulnerable, Susiraja’s works are grounded in unabashed yet private performances for the camera. In these stagings, household objects—tablecloths, umbrellas, hot dogs, bananas, treadmills, rubber duckies and dead fish—become co-conspirators in her confrontations with the lens. Situated between the slapstick and the deadpan, Susiraja’s works locate uneasiness in the comfortable, and vice versa.
Published on the occasion of the artist's first US museum exhibition, Iiu Susiraja: A style called a dead fish traces the trajectory of Susiraja's practice from her earliest photographs (circa 2007) to the present. The publication also features poems by Susiraja and an essay by curator Jody Graf.
The New York Times’ Roberta Smith writes: “These powerful works take aim at a dizzying array of contemporary body image issues, obsessions and taboos, and from different angles, including fat shaming, fitness, obesity, standards of beauty, dysmorphia, self-loathing, self-love and of course sex,” while New York Magazine’s Jerry Saltz calls Susiraja’s self-portraiture “a vision you cannot look away from.”
Designed in a small, 6x8-inch format and collecting just under 60 photographs alongside poems by the artist and essays by Jody Graf and Ruba Katrib, this volume is as compelling, unique and enigmatic as its title suggests.
Iiu Susiraja (born 1975) earned an MFA from the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts. She was featured as the cover story for ArtForum’s February 2022 issue. Her recent solo exhibitions include MoMA PS1, Ramiken Gallery, SKMU Museum, KIASMA, Kadel Willborn Gallery, Francois Ghebaly Gallery, PS2 Gallery, VB Photographic Centre, Ramiken Crucible and Fotogalleriet Format. Her work is in public and private collections worldwide, including at the Adam Lindenmann Collection, the University of Chicago, the Rubell Family Collection, the Finnish Museum of Photography collection, Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art and the Finnish National Gallery.
Softcover
148 pages
20.32 x 15.24 cm
Published 2023