Elina Brotherus
How do architects draw when they draw for themselves? The series In the Architect’s House takes place in the Aalto House (1935-36), Alvar, Aino and Elissa Aalto’s home on Riihitie street in Munkkiniemi, Helsinki.
Over the past few years, Brotherus has photographed several buildings designed by Alvar Aalto, exploring people’s personal experiences of these spaces. Layers of time, stories, and emotions create a relationship between the individual and the architecture.
Aalto’s architecture reminds Brotherus of a set design, where interconnected spaces unfold into a spatial sequence that invites the presence of the human figure. Instead of empty rooms, her photographs stage a dialogue between the (fictional) inhabitant and the house. Her women open the doors to their homes, inviting the viewer to experience the architecture through their eyes. In this series, traces of Alvar, Aino, and Elissa Aalto emerge, allowing us to imagine how they themselves might have inhabited these rooms.
Bio
Elina Brotherus is a performative lens-based artist whose practice explores art histories, autobiography, play, and architecture, often through a feminist re-reading. She uses her own figure as a model-protagonist. Her primary media are large-format color photography and experimental short videos. Elina Brotherus is one of the most recognized North-European artists of her generation.
Elina Brotherus lives and works in Helsinki, Finland and Avallon, France. She holds an MA in Photography from Aalto University and an MSc in Chemistry from the University of Helsinki. She has been awarded, among others, the Artist Professorship Grant of the Arts Promotion Centre Finland (2022-2026), Carte blanche PMU, France (2017), the Finnish State Prize for Photography (2008), and the Prix Niépce of Gens d’image, France (2005). Her works are in over 80 public collections including the Centre Pompidou, Paris, LACMA, Los Angeles, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark, and MAXXI, Rome.
Elina Brotherus started exhibiting internationally in 1997. Recent institutional solo exhibitions include Centre Pompidou, Paris (2017), Kunst Haus Wien, Vienna; National Gallery of Iceland, Reykjavik (2018), FérnanGómez, Madrid; Villa Vauban, Musée d’Art de la Ville de Luxembourg (2019), Weserburg Museum of Modern Art, Bremen (2020), Ateneum Art Museum of the Finnish National Gallery, Helsinki; FRAC Bourgogne, Dijon (2022), Museum Schloss Moyland, Bedburg-Hau; ARTER, Istanbul (2023), Kunstsilo, Kristiansand; Kunsten Museum of Modern Art, Aalborg (2025); Museum für Photographie Braunschweig (2026).
Images on this page: Elina Brotherus, Watering Plants and Breakfast, from the series In the Architect’s House, 2020
