Born in Helsinki in 1974, Finnish artist Elina Brotherus lives in Helsinki and France. In her Helsinki School-influenced photographic work and videos the artist herself and the landscape play the principle roles.
We first met Elina Brotherus in 2015 when she accompanied her husband, the video artist Lauri Astala, to Föhr for the opening of the group show “Empty Rooms” at the Museum Kunst der Westküste.
While Lauri Astala, as one of the participating artists, was busy with meetings with the press, the preview, and the opening, Elina Brotherus preferred to take her camera and quietly “disappear” to the open spaces of the island. She became enamoured with the landscape. She showed us one of her photographs and we invited her to came back. Which she did: some eighteen months later, after the opening of an exhibition in Paris that was very important to her, she returned with her dog Marcello. The two made daily trips all over the island, and in the process the topic “Erwin Wurm” increasingly came to the fore, as she was subsequently going to meet Erwin Wurm in person in Austria.
We will see what will come of all this in the future... Either way, Elina Brotherus will return to Föhr once more, and first ideas of an exhibition at the Museum Kunst der Westküste are already being discussed.