Face camouflage unites the human figures in the works by Laura Kopio. Fictional and real events are recreated through the characters of the paintings. Laura Kopio reflects on issues related to existence, history and memories from the perspective of power. Whose past and which historical events are considered valuable and worth telling? The present and history are intertwined in the series of works, in which multilayering and restlessness of time occur intensively.

They say that when you take off the mask you reveal the truth. The things hidden behind the mask go out to the surface. However, the relationship between revelation and truth is not simple. Oscar Wilde wrote: “Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth”.

The word “prosopon” for the Greek mask was translated into the Latin word “persona”. The word meaning mask is thus behind the concept of personality we use today, meaning what we are. You can think of a person as something we express. The mask does not hide a real person, but the person is a mask in itself.

The main theme of the exhibition is based on the reflections of the German philosopher Theodor Adorno and can be summed up in the phrase “The need to lend a voice to suffering is a condition for all truth”. The aim of this work is to highlight the invisible suffering associated with the social problems caused by violence.

During the Renaissance, masks and carnivals also had a social perspective. Disguised social classes appear to be equal for a moment. The mask gives permission to do things that would not otherwise be appropriate to do for your own estate or morals. Carnival is a state of emergency where Oscar Wilde’s sentence comes true: Under the guise of a mask, a person does what he really wants. On the other hand, making class differences invisible is also a way for society to hide the problems of the disadvantaged.

In recent years, we have been forced to wear a mask designed to protect our health. Exceptional circumstances, on the other hand, can also take off masks from everyone’s face. Who are we now, with the world order shattered, peace broken and the consequences of violence visible to us too?

In the works, the artist describes not only the visible changes caused by physical violence, but also and above all the experience after the violence, the disintegration of the victim’s self-image. Masks and facial distortions serve as a metaphor for this change.

Laura Kopio is a Helsinki-based visual artist who graduated from the Turku Academy of Arts as a visual artist and is finishing her studies in art history at the University of Jyväskylä. Her work deals mainly with issues of power, violence, and authority. While she was studying  art history and philosophy the theme of suffering has become a central area of her ​​interest, and it was addressed in the reflections of Theodor Adorno, Hannah Arendt. For Kopio art is primarily a thought and she hopes that the works will reflect the dialogue, distance and presence of history and the present, and the open questions associated with them.

Kopio held exhibitions e.g. Sipoo Culture House, B-Gallery in Turku and Galleria Topelius in Helsinki. Art Hall After Häme Kopio’s next exhibitions will be in Joensuu Art Center in Ahjo in November and in the spring of 2023 in Berlin.

The work and the completion of the exhibition have been supported by the Art Promotion Center.

More Information.
laurakopio.com