Jussi Lautu: IN/VISIBILITY

IN/VISIBILITY reflects on the politics of visibility. The works in the exhibition ask whether you must be visible and on what terms. When fighting for the rights of minorities, a photograph is often used for its evidentiary power—that's when making people and phenomena visible takes centre stage. However, otherness is not always visible, or bringing it forth can put the people in the pictures in a vulnerable position. The series proposes photographic methods centred on self-determination, failure, and ambiguity.

The exhibition features 117 self-portraits by nonbinary individuals, created in collaboration with the participants so that they had control of their self-representation. They made and chose the portraits in this series themselves. This is a pursuit of utopia because the right to self-determination for nonbinary people is rarely realised—they are not recognised legally, nor even in everyday life. The exhibition can be considered a joint exhibition of 118 people because the subjects themselves made the portraits. The self-portraits of nonbinary individuals were created as part of Lautu’s Master’s thesis in photographic art and her doctoral dissertation in gender studies between 2020 and 2024.

Alongside the self-portraits, the exhibition presents failed views, glitches, captured on the Google Street View. These are details of the 360° images uploaded to the service saved with the screenshot function. Jack Halberstam claims that in a heteronormative and cisnormative society, queer people will always fail. However, being an outsider might reveal the absurdity of those norms. Failure can be a superpower.  

Jussi Lautu (they/she) is a photographic artist and a doctoral researcher in gender studies. They graduated from the master’s program in Photography at Aalto University in 2020 and the master’s program in Gender Studies at the University of Helsinki in 2021. Lautu has held several solo exhibitions and participated in group exhibitions in Finland and abroad. Their artistic work focuses on the questions of gender diversity. Lautu is interested in the effects of photographic representations and the questions of power in producing images. Lautu lives and works in Helsinki.

The project has been supported by the Kone Foundation, the Finnish Cultural Foundation Uusimaa Fund, Finnfoto ry, the Arts Promotion Centre Finland, Kansan sivistysrahasto, and the Olga and Vilho Linnamo Foundation.

Open April 16-31 Tue–Fri 9 a.m. – 8 p.m. Sat–Sun 10 a.m. – 6 p.m.

Open June 1–27 10 a.m.–6 p.m. (closed on Midsummer)

Free admission!

The Culture House Laikku is largely accessible. Read more about Laikku's accessibility.

The event will follow Safer Space Guidelines.

For more information about exhibitions at Culture House Laikku:

Irma Puttonen

Senior Coordinator

irma.puttonen@tampere.fi

050 553 8673