Portraiture as Social Commentary

Portraiture as Social Commentary


Opening: Friday, 17 November 2023, 6 – 8 pm
Exhibition: 18 November 2023 – 27 January 2024
Venue: Persons Projects, Lindenstr. 34–35, 10969 Berlin

Persons Projects is delighted to present the latest group exhibition titled Portraiture as Social Commentary; this exhibition not only highlights the different aspects of the genre but also links together a variety of artistic perspectives. A portrait is a painting, a photograph, a sculpture, or any other representation of a person in which the face and its expressions are predominant. They reveal the presence of the subject viewed from the perspective of the artist – a merger of contrasts between what’s projected by one and perceived by another. These images become mirrors of many faces that reflect both the political and cultural undercurrents relevant to the time period in which they were conceived.

Milja Laurila | Untitled Women

Opening: Friday, 29 April 2022, 6 – 9 pm
Exhibition: 28 April – 25 June 2022
Venue: Persons Projects | Helsinki School, Lindenstr. 34, 10969 Berlin

During Gallery Weekend Berlin 2022.


Persons Projects is proud to present Milja Laurila’s Untitled Women series, which utilizes a present day feminist lens to understand how women have historically been viewed by men.

The 1930s book titled Woman. An Historical Gynæcological and Anthropological Compendium acts as a point of departure for Laurila’s work. Originally published in German in 1885 and written by three men, the book is illustrated with hundreds of photographs of naked women and children from all over the world, primarily colonized countries. This cross between anthropology, racism, and sexism, come together to create an uncomfortable viewing experience that claims to be ‘scientific’. The photographed women have no voice and they are presented as exotic specimens found in nature. The ethnographic pictorial style allowed the pretence of looking at women objectively and innocently. The exoticizing gaze, with its sexual desire, was hidden behind the veneer of legitimate scientific inquiry.

Milja Laurila | Untitled Women

Inconsistent Ways of Seeing


Exhibition: 29 April - 28 August 2021
Venue: Persons Projects, Lindenstr. 35, 10969 Berlin


We proudly present the group exhibition Inconsistent Ways of Seeing, highlighting the correlation between image and language. The five artists selected for this presentation all work in different medias and share a mutual interest in exploring their diverse points of view dealing with the relationship between text and visual art. They are all connected by how they challenge the subject of association with what we see and assume based upon our knowledge and experience of correlating the image with the words that define it. This disassociation process disrupts the identity relationship between the verbal and the visual encouraging abstract thinking.
Combining text with images has a long history in art and especially so in the last century, with Dadaism, Surrealism, Fluxus and the emergence of Conceptual Art. The artists in the 1960s and 70s treated language as an equal element in their works, creating a new perspective on interpreting and presenting ideas. This exhibition continues this dialogue with works spanning over the last three decades.

Milja Laurila – In Their Own Voice

Opening: Friday, March 11, 6 – 9 pm
Exhibition: March 12 - April 23, 2016

Gallery Taik Persons proudly presents Milja Laurila’s most recent works in the solo exhibition In Their Own Voice raising the questions of the apparent transparency of our pictorial realm and the act of being looked at. 

Who is looking and whom is the gaze being focused on? How do we look at a body, a child, a woman, a man, the world? Are we looking without seeing? We are observing, but the sight might penetrate its target, see distorted, drift away. Laurila questions if photographs have the ability to forget what they once were proof of. She asks, if images detached from their original context, still remain related to the original semantic field or transform into something else. Can an image of a young girl’s spine suffering from scoliosis transform without captions into a sculptural beauty?

 Milja Laurila – In Their Own Voice