Eyes as Big as Plates

Riitta Ikonen and Karoline Hjorth.

Work from Eyes as Big as Plates.

“Eyes as Big as Plates began in 2011 as a collaborative project between Norwegian-Finnish artist duo Karoline Hjorth and Riitta Ikonen. Initially conceived as a play on characters from Nordic folklore, the project has grown to over 150 portraits created in 17 countries across five continents. The duo works through complementing skills through photography, wearable sculpture and text, with a core mission to highlight dialogue on radical system change on interspecies relations.

Hjorth and Ikonen photograph their collaborators, often individuals actively involved or impacted by effects of this era of mass extinction: Farmers, surfers, grandmas, citizen scientists, rewinding experts, wild boar hunters, mycologists, philosophers, etc. outdoors, camouflaged in organic materials sourced from their surroundings. Each portrait is a dialogue between the collaborator and their living environment, capturing the individual’s belonging to the so-called ‘nature’ and questioning the boundaries between beings.

To the artists, the final portrait is the bonus to the encounter with the protagonists in the images. The core of Eyes as Big as Plates is always about the meetings. Each portrait starts with a conversation, which is steered by the collaborator. The duo’s main job is to listen. From the conversation, the location and material for the sculpture arrives as a joint idea, resulting in a final portrait and text that are equally important…” – Eyes as Big as Plates