Iiu Susiraja

Iiu Susiraja is ISCP's artist-in-residence from January to June 2018.

Visual artist Iiu Susiraja’s first solo exhibition in the United States, What Am I?, was on view at the Ramiken Crucible gallery in New York at the end of 2016. The exhibition, curated by FCINY’s MOBIUS Fellow Mike Egan, was well-received, attracting media attention on platforms such as The New Yorker and ArtNews. A little over a year later, Susiraja is coming to New York for a six-month artist residency at the International Studio and Curatorial Program ISCP.

“Iiu Susiraja’s self-portraiture is shocking, not because this provocation exists within the sensational, but rather because it explores arenas of vulnerability, empowerment, intimacy, and mundanity in quite a unique way. -- Frequently we as viewers feel like we are invading her privacy, but her gaze is always direct and focused to the camera”, writer and editor Reba Maybury describes in Beyond the Pleasure Principle, a publication produced by FCINY in 2016.

Iiu Susiraja is known for her frank, quietly humorous, and strikingly intimate self-portraits. Her practice involves capturing mundane domestic situations that relate to themes of femininity, the body, and social stereotypes through photography and video. Most of Susiraja’s self-portraits have been taken in her parents’ home in Turku, Finland.

The artist is still exhilarated by her 2016 solo show at the Ramiken Crucible, describing it as one of the most important moments of her career to date. Mike Egan, the co-director of Ramiken Crucible and the curator of Susiraja’s exhibition, participated in the Mobius Fellowship Program in 2016, through which he was able to become more familiar with Susiraja’s work.

During her six-month residency, Susiraja will be creating new works, but is determined not to plan too much ahead: “I have started challenging myself to take photographs outside my home and, surprisingly, found myself liking it. Now I am about to do it as far as in New York.”