October 15 - November 13, 2022

Opening reception: Saturday, October 15 from 6–8pm

A.I.R. Gallery is pleased to announce SOCIAL PORTRAIT, an exhibition of a socially engaged art project by artist Katriina Haikala. This is Haikala’s first solo exhibition in New York City.

Find out more here.

The exhibition is the latest iteration of the artist’s ongoing Social Portrait project, in which she aims to equalize the art canon by drawing one-thousand portraits of everyday women around the world. It is also the first presentation of the project in the United States. The exhibition presents approximately one-thousand of Haikala’s drawings, dated 2017–2022, as well as new portraits drawn during performances that will occur throughout the course of the exhibition.

Haikala says: “I developed a strong need to work with portraits after realizing that the history of art is the history of power. Historically, portraits have been mostly painted of people who have had a high status in society. If we look at the history of Europe, or any other continent, we all know what the faces of power have typically looked like—they have been men. With this project, I counterbalance art history by drawing a thousand portraits of people who identify as women.”

The exhibition includes five durational drawing performances in which women visiting the gallery may model for one of Haikala’s portraits. Haikala observes her model carefully and draws what she sees, without taking her eyes off the sitter. “When I draw, I don’t look at the paper at all, but instead look intensely at the sitter in front of me. With this method, I want to emphasize the experiences of being seen and acknowledged,” she says.

Haikala began her project at Amos Anderson Art Museum in Helsinki, Finland, in 2017. Since then, she has drawn in numerous Finnish art museums, as well as in Spiral Art Center in Tokyo, Japan, Thyssen-Bornemisza National Gallery in Madrid, Spain, and Fondazione Volume! in Rome, Italy.