Miia Autio
YOUR FACE HERE
16.8. – 8.9.2019
Do you exist?
Are you visible?
Who can see you?
How does it make you feel?
In 1890, French police officer Alphonse Bertillon developed an identification method based on physical measurements. It was the first scientific system used to identify criminals. It also set the standard for photographic identification and laid the foundation for modern surveillance. Since then, surveillance and control mechanisms have become invisible.
The one-child policy pursued by China for over three decades can be seen as the government’s extreme control over its citizens. As a result, it is estimated that there have been about 13 million undocumented people born as a second child. Paradoxically, the extreme control created groups of people outside of government control.
In December 2018, American graphics technology company NVIDIA published an extensive database of human faces generated by artificial intelligence. Flickr-Faces-HQ (FFHQ) contains 70,000 high-quality images. While a large number of people are forced to live as faceless beings, artificial intelligence has learned to create believable facial images of people who do not really exist.
Miia Autio (b. 1986) is a visual artist mainly working with photography. Her works deal with the themes of otherness, identity and viewership in light of different societal issues. Often defined topics or selected groups of people open up more extensive questions and unitive motifs. In her artistic work she is interested in disclosing conceptions and power structures that photography creates.
Autio graduated as a photographer from the Lahti Institute of Design and Fine Art and the Bielefeld University of applied sciences. She is currently studying for a MFA degree at the Academy of Fine Arts at the University of the Arts in Helsinki. Her works have been seen in several solo and group shows in both Finland and abroad.
The exhibition has been supported by the Arts Promotion Centre Finland’s Arts Council of Uusimaa as well as the National Council for the Visual Arts.
