Tuovi Hippeläinen: Untitled

Photographic artist Tuovi Hippeläinen (born 1959) represents a generation of artists that renewed Finnish media art in the 1980s by engaging in experimental film, video and photographic expression.

In Hippeläinen’s untitled photographic works, image is co-presented with another element – a black line or a numbered plate that emerges at the immediate surface of the image. In her photographic works, Hippeläinen combines elements of collage and poster art, thus breaking the traditional boundaries of painting, traditional photography, and graphic design. The works embody graininess associated with the television aesthetics of the time of their creation, which also lends them a nostalgic quality.

Hippeläinen graduated as a photographer from the Lahti Institute of Design in 1986. She has created video art and photographic works in which she has examined painterly qualities of photographs. Some of the recurring themes in Hippeläinen’s oeuvre are shadow images and snow, which she has used both as a subject and material in her works.