Gothic Art in Spotlight: Eerie photography with needles and pins

About a month ago I introduced to you a sculptor who used fabric as the main material in her works. This time I am going to write about an artist, who mainly works with photography but for the last few years she has started to use needle more and more.

Ulla Jokisalo is a Finnish artist whose exhibition "Intentions - under the Guise of Play" I saw 2011 and I love her work. Jokisalo is a very commendable artist who has also been a professor at the University of Arts and Design (these days it is called Aalto University, it is situated in Helsinki and the neighboring city Espoo, in Finland) I remembered Jokisalo because last week I visited that same museum I saw her work and in the museum's shop I saw a postcard of one of her artworks. It was one of my favorites and you can see it below.

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The name of this piece of art is "Ring dance" and the dancing children are actually attached with little pins on the other pigment print, so it is not just a print, those pins are sticking out of it. It looks rather creepy, the children dancing in mid-air in a spooky grey forest and the pins give a little hint of voodoo and black magic, at least it does to me.

Another one I really like is "Inspiration". When I first saw it I did not instantly check the title of the work and the first thing I thought about it was that this is about domestic violence. I guess that tells more about me and my pessimistic point of view than it tells about the artwork "Inspiration". :)

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These works of Jokisalo are somewhat special, since the yarn and needles are real and they seem to push towards the viewer and I have seldom seen yarn used in art of photography. The third and last artwork I want to show you is "Neulankantaja" (Carrier of the needle). This headless figure carrying a huge needle is somehow really appealing to me.

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Thanks for reading and I would love to hear which one of these artworks is your favorite!