Bio

Feminism and memory are central themes in Milja Laurila’s work, which delves into the intricate relationship between knowledge and the subconscious. In her artistic practice, she questions a photograph’s ability to forget what it once was proof of—does an image that is detached from its context still remain related to the original semantic field, or does it transform into something new? By using borrowed images—particularly photographs from old medical books—as the foundation of her work, she frees them from their original context, allowing them to take on new meanings and speak on their own. Her alterations subvert and disrupt the sociopolitical structures underlying the original photographs.

Laurila's interest in images of patients stems from a personal experience in which she herself was observed through the eyes of science: "As I was standing naked in front of a doctor and her camera, I felt myself disappearing — I was mere flesh and blood, not an individual with thoughts and feelings. Even though the doctor was photographing my body meticulously, it felt as if she was looking right through me — as if I wasn’t there”. In many ways, this bodily experience is reflected in Laurila's works, which often combine naked bodies with transparent or translucent materials in order to symbolize the fragility of the portrayed subjects.

Milja Laurila (*1982 in Helsinki, Finland) studied at Musashino Art University, Tokyo in 2008, before graduating from Aalto University in 2010. Her works have been exhibited internationally at various solo and group exhibitions, including at the Brooklyn Museum (New York), LACMA (Los Angeles), National Gallery in Sopot (PL), Kunsthalle Helsinki, Fondation Hippocrène (Paris), MOCAK (Krakow), École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts (Paris), and Borås Artmuseum (SE). Her works are also included in the collections of important American and Finnish institutions, such as LACMA, Helsinki Art Museum, Finnish Museum of Photography, Saastamoinen Foundation Art Collection (FI), and State Art Collection (FI), in addition to private collections in Australia, Belgium, Finland, Germany, and Norway.

News:
Art Düsseldorf with Persons Projects in Düsseldorf, Germany
April 17-19, 2026. 

milja laurila
@milja_laurila

Untitled Women
Project Statement

Milja Laurila's series, Untitled Women, comes from the artist's recent discovery of a 1930s book, titled Woman. An Historical Gynæcological and Anthropological Compendium. The book, originally published in Germany in 1885, was one of the most influential texts in the field of sexual science at the time. The book describes the female physiology from an anthropological viewpoint. It is illustrated with hundreds of photographs of naked women and children from all over the world. The bodies are stripped from their personality, presented as exotic specimens, and referred to as mere objects. In her work, Laurila is looking to change the purpose of the original photographs and to present women from a different perspective.

"I have been using medical imagery for more than a decade, and every time I look at the women in the pictures, I feel an emotional connection to them, wondering how they must have felt while being photographed, and what their lives were like". By using translucent paper to hide the original scientific photograph, except for the women's eyes, she is shifting the focus from the detailed assessment of the female body parts to the eyes and the power of their gaze. "Now it is them who are looking at you. How does it feel to be looked at?"