Teresia and Rafael Lönnström Home Museum
Rauma, Finland
June 27 – August 29, 2012
In the series Blue Scarf, a character – a woman in dark clothes – appears in a series of photographs wearing a blue scarf, which covers either her head or her shoulders. The locations in the photographs shift from a courtyard in Paris to a park bench in Tel Aviv, and on to a square in a small Estonian town. The sites, the woman’s postures, and the way the scarf is tied define how we see her: as a beggar, a homeless person, a stallholder, a mourner, or a donna arriving at a secret assignation.
The existence of identity is challenged as such. An individual’s identity is largely defined by the external world, often regardless of the person’s own conception of his or her individuality. This notion, in fact, is often in outright contradiction with the external appearance, which tends to situate the individual as part of a group or social class.