Penelope Umbrico: Learning from eBay

Penelope Umbrico (b. 1957) is an American artist who works with photographs found on the Internet. Her installations present a clever and playful way to examine the enormous production and consumption of photographs in the 2020s.

Umbrico ventures into the virtual world of online marketplaces. Tori.fi, eBay and Craigslist are popular marketplaces from which the artist uses images in her installations. Although millions of photographs are uploaded daily on these sites, they are rarely seen as anything but a tool for business between a seller and a buyer. However, the inadvertent treasure trove of human activity found in the images turn these websites into useful photo archives. Umbrico presents these archives as a collective cultural self-portrait.

As autumn progresses in Finland, the exhibition begins with a much-needed source of light, the Sun. However, when we look at an image of the Sun on a screen, people are actually seeing light from the screen instead of sunlight. They are experiencing sunlight, to an increasing extent, only as image conveyed by a screen.

Finnish Museum of Photography , K 1

14.10.2022-5.2.2023 

Mon-Fri 11.00-20.00

Sat-Sun 11.00-18.00

Admission fee 6/12€, under 18 yrs free entry