Emma Sarpaniemi: Snake Lifter

Opening: 12/12/2/25 at 7 pm
KO:KE Space
Prilaz Gjure Deželića 27, Zagreb
Curators: Barbara Gregov, Lovro Japundžić and Lea Vene
Design: Alma Šavar
Translation: Tihana Bertek
Technical support: Marin Kovačević and Jasna Givens
Photography: Ive Trojanović

Supported by: Ministry of Culture and Media of the Republic of Croatia,
City Office for Culture and Civil Society Zagreb, Kultura Nova Foundation

The exhibition is open until December 23rd,
during gallery hours.

After the successful 13th edition of the Organ Vida Festival, we present the programme for the festival’s off-year, in which we continue to explore the ways in which ugliness and the grotesque manifest in contemporary art and visual culture. Once again, the weirdos take centre stage in a slightly bizarre yet touching act of rejecting perfectionism — both in relation to the body and visual culture.The solo exhibition Snake Lifter by Finnish artist Emma Sarpaniemi opens on December 12 at KO:KE space, and on December 13 at Pogon Jedinstvo Latvian artist Laima Jaunzema will present the performance Extra Mouth: She loves empty fountains. The programme concludes with a screening of Magic Farm, a film by Argentine visual artist and filmmaker Amalia Ulman, on December 15 at Kinoteka.

Emma Sarpaniemi's solo exhibition Snake Lifter examines identity and gender roles through performative self-portraits. The artist performs various models of femininity based on symbols of innocence and absurdity, testing the limits of self-representation. The photographs are created through bodily performances, reactions to phallocentric objects such as a baguette, a pencil or a rolling pin. The artist translates the act of taking control of one's own image into a playful and humorous self-reflection. In the title Snake Lifter, she alludes to the experience of donning a snake skin, which she interprets as a transformative artistic process. Each newly created photograph becomes a kind of second skin and an unstable surface to play with. The elusive protagonists are embodied as unfinished images of femininity.

Emma Sarpaniemireceived a BA in Photography from the Royal Academy of Art The Hague in 2019. In her practice, she explores womanhood and constructions of femininity through performative self-portraiture. For Sarpaniemi, self-portraiture functions as a playground—a space for experimenting with representation and resisting conventional modes of the gaze.

Her work has been widely exhibited across Europe in galleries, museums, and festivals, including Jarmuschek+Partner (2025), NEVVEN (2025), The Finnish Museum of Photography K1 (2024), Les Rencontres d’Arles (2023), Photo Elysée (2025), Museum Folkwang (2024), and the Miettinen Collection (2024).

Her works are included in numerous public and private collections, among them Museum Folkwang, the City of Gothenburg, HAM Helsinki Art Museum, Podesta Collection, Les Rencontres d’Arles, Turku Art Museum, the Jenny and Antti Wihuri Foundation, the Heino Art Foundation, the Miettinen Collection, and the Finnish State Art Funds, as well as in numerous private collections in Finland, Sweden, Germany, the Netherlands, and Switzerland.