Jyrki Siukonen Finnish, b. 1959

Siukonen has received the five-year grant from the Finnish Arts Council three times and has been an artist-in-residence at the Finnish Institute in Rome on three occasions. His awards include the Finnish State Prize (2017) and the Edvard Richter Prize from the Finnish Art Society (2023). He has also conducted several research projects and published monographs on art and cultural history. He currently lives and works in Helsinki, Finland.

Photographic works represent a new development in Jyrki Siukonen's artistic practice. The series presented at Paris Photo 2026 was created at the initiative of the dealer Miyako Yoshinaga. It began with a single work Siukonen exhibited in New York in 2019. Siukonen revisited the original found material to develop a new experimental concept centered on the theme of the hand. Using simple manual techniques, he created multi-layered photographic images combined with physical objects.

When the opportunity arose to work with photographic themes, Jyrki Siukonen also created a homage to Henry Fox Talbot's iconic early photographic image of spruce needles (c. 1839). This rudimentary work, created without a lens, has inspired Siukonen for many years.

Outside Finland, Siukonen has shown his works in Budapest 1985, Essen 1987, Moscow 1988 &1990, Hannover 1990, Tallinn 1991, Cracow 1991, Bergen 1992, Stockholm 1992, Leeds 1994 & 1995, Berlin 1991, 1996 & 2012, São Paulo 1994, Oslo 1995 &1999, Istanbul 1995, Chemnitz 1996, Prague 1999, Reykjavik 1999 & 2000, Vilnius 2000, Avesta 2002, New York 2002, 2003 & 2019, Rome 2007, Basel 2009, Freiburg 2009, Hardanger 2016, Nürnberg 2018, among other locations.