Italian phrenologist Cesare Lombroso wrote in 1893 a study of female skulls called The Criminal Woman, the Prostitute and the Normal Woman. In his struggles to understand female propensity for violence, he creates a category of third sex - criminal (non) women. As the acts of ants and bees, that he chose to study as a non-human paralel example, their acts are in his opinion so unfeminine that they shouldn’t be considered as female.*
Who is the criminal then? Mostly someone who doesn’t fit in the nicely arranged straight white male universe. Someone who’s role is to be ‘invisibly’ and regularly abused in very specific ways and who doesn’t consent to play the role.
In its solo exhibition, criminal, to kosie draws a story of female experience in a form of mixed media sculptures and videos. Ground floor white cube of Oksasenkatu 11 Gallery presents pain correlated with sexual harassment, precarious life, exclusion, depression. On the contrary, the basement of the gallery becomes a hidden bunker of sexual self confidence and ‘alien’ intelligence, showing female power embodying movement, change, fluidity and unity in differences.
*source: Hanna Proctor, Charlotte Corday’s skull / Ulrike Meinhof’s brain: gender, matter and meaning - a postmortem; (in) Art Theoretical writings from the Academy of Fine Arts 10: Objects of Feminism, edited by Main Timonen and Josefine Wikström.
to kosie is a visual artist based in Helsinki, creating mixed media sculptures, videos and performances, working on feministic thought and implementing it in fluid sculptural forms. The nickname ‘to kosie’ and use of pronoun ‘it’ is a gesture of giving up on the privilege of being a person. to kosie considers engagement with the materials as a base of an interaction, which remains are usually sculptures and videos.
Recently it’s been working on a long term project called ‘octopussy’. It is a proposal for new social structure based on feministic thought (Rosi Braidotti, Laurie Penny), it’s inspired by uniqueness of octopian’ body and it’s going towards possible fluid / feminine forms, open for conversations, exchange. The project is focused on mixed media sculptures representing bodies in change. Repressed with postcapitalism, crawling towards connection with material reality, looking for horizontal relations with others, accepting chaos of constant movement. Development of ‘octopussy’ project was supported by Arts Promotion Centre Finland and Paulo Foundation.
to kosie’s works have been exhibited at the Main Project of 6th Moscow International Biennale for Young Art, Pori Biennale III, The Festival of Political Photography in Helsinki, Gallery Labirynth in Lublin, Rietveld Pavilion in Amsterdam, Snehta Residency in Athens and many more.
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