Sofia Okkonen

Sofia Okkonen’s work The meaning of things will inevitably change is the first part of a project that started in December 2017.

The installation of photographs taking over two walls emphasizes the process like nature of the work; the images leaning on to the walls suggest that they are still movable or changeable pieces. The visuals of the work are created from videos, and screencaps, shot with an iPhone.

The meaning of things will inevitably change invites the viewer to imagine the superhuman of the future.

At the centre of the project are the connections and merging of the female body and technology; investigating the concept of cyborgs and “superhuman” through fiction.

The piece presents flashes of scenes where the bodies of a research group formed of near identical looking assumed women characters are subjected to control, testing and modifications. The women in the scenes are still under construction, cyborgs on the brink of a new world getting ready for the future.

Their flesh – bodies and brains – are being injected with tailored artificial elements. In this process the boundaries between the body, mind and the surroundings are being blended and eradicated in new and unforeseeable ways. The questions of power and the destiny of the body are constantly looming in the background. Who gets to decide what is valuable in being a human? Who will have the opportunity to be a cyborg in the future? Okkonen has been especially motivated by recognising the emotions and fears surrounding the topic.

For instance, how does bodily (sexual) autonomy reflect itself in relation to alienation from other human beings? Is it possible that an unretouched individual loses her meaning next to the superhuman? Okkonen’s images are trying to reach atmospheric answers on a topic so easily elusive with spoken language.

“The cyborg is a kind of disassembled and reassembled, post-modern collective and personal self. This is the self-feminists must code.”

Donna Haraway

Sofia Okkonen was born in 1987 and is a fine art photographer based in Helsinki.
She has an MA degree in Fine Art Photography from Aalto University, School of Arts, Design and Architecture. Okkonen’s latest series Rose, which explores the performativity of the feminine, was shown in a solo exhibition at The Finnish Museum of Photography’s Project Space. Okkonen was selected as one of the ten finalists in the internationally acclaimed Hyères photography competition in Spring 2017. In her art, she studies how the beliefs about our ideal selves, beauty, trauma and eroticism present themselves in front of the camera, either through directed posing or through the uncontrolled and subconscious. Along with her art practices, she is specialised in fashion photography. The ideals of beauty ever-present in fashion photography provoke her, but, on the other hand, she is inspired by the roleplay, masks and fantasies they provide.