2020
Uwa Iduozee Studies Racist Algorithms
Uwa Iduozee’s series They Walked on Water (2018) tells the story of the first pioneering generation of Black people who made their home in Finland.
Uwa Iduozee, a Finnish-Nigerian photographer and documentary filmmaker based in Helsinki and New York is the Finnish Fine Arts Academy’s and Saastamoinen Foundation’s artist-in-residence at the International Studio and Curatorial Program (ISCP) starting January 2021. The residency period is catered to a US-based Finnish artist, as travel restrictions resulting from COVID-19 prohibit artists originally selected for the residency from accessing the United States.
Iduozee’s practice, derived from photojournalism, displays stories that open up new visual representations and understandings towards identities through series of photographs and documentary films. Often stemming from everyday life and personal narratives, his work focuses on expanding the ways in which we understand blackness by challenging the traditional framework of its visual representations. History of Afro-Finnishness and black identities in contemporary Finland are recurrent topics in his recent work. Iduozee’s photographs and documentaries have been presented in numerous magazines, newspapers, broadcast TV, online publications, and exhibitions in Finland and abroad. Uwa Iduozee’s They Walked on Water (2018) will be part of the inaugural Helsinki Biennial in 2021. The work, featuring portraits of people who arrived in Finland from the United States, the UK, Somalia, Sudan, Ethiopia and Nigeria between the 1950s and 1990s, tells the story of the first pioneering generation of Black people who made their home in Finland.
Uwa Iduozee. Photo by Sandra Itäinen.
During his residency at ISCP, Iduozee will work on a new video installation exploring links between modern algorithms and racialization, focusing on how emerging technologies are used to reinforce white supremacy and deepen social inequality. Algorithms do not only operate on existing biases, but often actively intensify them through a feedback loop of discriminatory models. Through the installation, Iduozee explores different methods that can be used in a studio environment to interrogate and make tangible the ways in which these processes are affecting black communities, as well as the different relationships between blackness, racialization, and technology.
The Academy of Fine Arts at the Uniarts Helsinki, in partnership with Saastamoinen Foundation hosts a residency programme for alumni of the Academy. The residency partners are Jan van Eyck Academie in Maastricht, SPACE in London, and the ISCP - International Studio & Curatorial Program in New York.