Remember Your Mortality II – Johanna Lemettinen

Remember Your Mortality II is a continuation of my exhibition held in the fall of 2013 at Gallery Rantakasarmi in Helsinki. The title of the exhibition, Memento Mori, is Latin for “Remember your mortality.” Throughout art history, Memento Mori paintings have often linked sexuality with death, corporeality, and even religiosity. The female figure in these works can be either a victim or a deadly femme fatale—a dangerous woman.

I create large-scale oil paintings that engage with feminist art through their personal and reflective approach to questions of womanhood. I am particularly interested in playing with different gender roles and female identities, as well as exploring themes of privacy, corporeality, sexuality, and the display of intimacy. The woman in my works questions whether sexuality is inherent or if it is produced by societal mechanisms, and how power and sexuality are intertwined.

My work also examines how women are viewed in contemporary Western society, how they could be viewed, and how a woman might respond to that gaze. The body can represent an individual’s true and deepest identity, yet at the same time, it can be merely a mask or a surface. The experience of corporeality is thus paradoxical—the body is the most personal aspect of an individual, yet simultaneously, it is the object of another’s gaze, a potential objectified entity.

This exhibition has been supported by the Finnish State Art Commission and Kauno ry.

www.johannalemettinen.com

Translated with ChatGPT