Woman. With more than 1,000 illustrations in black-and-white and seven colour plates

The works in Milja Laurila’s exhibition are based on the 1930s English language edition of the non-fiction book “Woman. An Historical Gynæcological and Anthropological Compendium”. The over 1000-page work, first published in German in 1885, was one of the most influential texts in its field and of its time. The book, which describes a woman’s physiology from an anthropological perspective, contains hundreds of photographs of nude women and children from around the world. The book paints the impression of a confusing combination of sexual and epistemological desire, with the women and girls presented like samples found by scientists in nature. The captions in the book speak of the attitude of the researchers: “An Indian girl displays her charms.”; “Firm resilient breasts in a Tunisian.”

The exhibition features photographs and a sound piece. The photographs in the series Untitled Women examine viewing and being viewed, as well as relative power positions. In the original scientific context of the time, a detailed assessment of a woman’s appearance and body parts was central to looking at the images. However, in Laurila’s exhibition, the viewer does not see them clearly, because a translucent paper placed under the frame’s glass obscures the view. As a result, the closer you get to the image, the less accurate the body’s shape becomes. Conversely, Milja Laurila turns the viewer’s attention to the women’s eyes. The subjects in the images look closely at the viewer through an opening left in the sheet of paper, inviting one to ask themselves how it feels to be the object of the gaze.