by Agape Charmani
Thanks to the plenty and diverse content that can be found on the internet, the culture that has been developed around it is an interesting combination of sorts. Deconstructing children’s shows, fangirling over famous people, obsessing with cats and being into gore is a few of the hobbies an internet person has been having for the last ten years or so.
When it comes to art, we’ve had the pleasure of being introduced to many new, young artists and their work. In the case of Finnish artist Riikka Hyvonen, the internet seems to have played an important role as her inspiration. Influenced by her roller derby days, the artist paints stunning big bruises on female bottoms, “I started to pay attention to the girls’ habit of showing off the derby kisses on the side of the pitch when I was training with my team, London Rollergirls Recreational League. The feminist spirit of the aggressive sport made a great impression to me, so I started to collect pictures from my friends. But these days women from all around the world keep on sending me photos of their bottoms,” she explains.
Pointing out the level of objectification the female body has met especially on the internet, Hyvonen simply depicts what is there to see, as girls often like to show off their proud bruised bottoms as ‘true badges of honor’.“Although I am objectifying these women totally, I am doing it exactly in the way they objectify themselves,” says the artist. “I’d like to challenge the idea of beauty, and help people to search for it from unexpected places. Everyone’s skin reacts to a hit differently. The wounds are mesmerizing, like psychedelic mini galaxies that never fail to tell a story.”
