Two ways to Carry a Cauliflower

Two Ways to Carry a Cauliflower by Emma Sarpaniemi is a performative photography series exploring women’s self portraiture through play. To free the subject from the male gaze, the character depicted in the images is portrayed playfully and tenderly as a woman who behaves, looks, and performs on her terms and rules. While playfulness can often be perceived as naivety in the context of female artistry, Sarpaniemi turns it into a resource, possibilities for new ways of being. The starting point for self-portraits in the project is often an object or clothing found at a flea market, from which the artist begins to construct a photograph. Sarpaniemi selects the clothes, stages the scenes, photographs and designs the self-portraits herself. She is interested in using everyday objects in an unpredictable manner to create contradictions and alternative symbolic meanings within the photographs.