keskiviikko, 3 lokakuun, 2012, 08:51

Tiina Pusa’s doctoral thesis awakens Sleeping Beauties

Jaana’s Sleeping Beauty exhibition set of the Everyday Alchemy trilogy has been sleeping for years. The exhibition set describes wise and active old women in silverised imaginary portraits. It deals with the frailty of existence, on one hand, and the strength of man, on the other. Tiina Pusa says she sees ”– in the series of photographs aesthesised old age and beauty whose roots go back to 18th-century picturesque –”.

Now these dignified old ladies can wake from their sleep for a moment, with the publication of Tiina Pusa’s doctoral thesis ”Grey Art” on the 5th of October, 2012, at noon, at the Aalto University in Helsinki. Ms. Pusa examines in her dissertation questions such as what kinds of meanings elderly persons attach to art in their speech and what kinds of meanings are constructed of old age in art. Ms. Pusa says the following about the Sleeping Beauty series: ”The Sleeping Beauty series of photographs has clearly sought a way to present old people as beautiful. The signs of old age are accepted as inevitable, or they have been chosen consciously to be borne. We can thus surely agree that it is a good thing to wake up to a day like this.

Suvi Niinisalo

Sleeping Beauty artwork from trilogy Everyday Alchemy, 2004

Avainsanat: Everyday Alchemy, Sleeping Beauty