ELINA BROTHERUS is one of the most recognized contemporary artists from Scandinavia. Her practice moves between autobiography and art history, between the figure and the landscape, between the artist as subject and the artist as image-maker. Early series drawn from personal experience gave way to works exploring the human presence in nature and the charged relation of painter and model. More recently, she has revisited Fluxus event scores and performance instructions from the 1950s through the 1970s, while a parallel thread leads her into private houses designed by important architects, where she inhabits roles of imagined characters. Her tranquil presence breathes life into these iconic spaces.

Brotherus lives and works in Helsinki and Avallon, France. She holds an MA in Photography from what is now Aalto University and an MSc in Chemistry from the University of Helsinki. Among her honors are the Artist Professorship Grant of the Arts Promotion Centre Finland (2022–2026), Carte blanche PMU in France (2017), the Finnish State Prize for Photography (2008), and the Prix Niépce (2005). Her photographs belong to more than eighty public collections, including the Centre Pompidou, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, LACMA, and Moderna Museet.

Since 1997 she has exhibited internationally. Recent solo presentations include Fill With Own Imagination at Kunsten Museum of Modern Art, Aalborg; Dreamer at Miettinen Collection, Berlin (2025); In the Architect's House at MAPS, Denmark; Reglas de juego at Centro Cultural PUCP, Lima (2024); Brotherus Block Beuys at Museum Schloss Moyland (2023); Visitor at Didrichsen Art Museum, Helsinki; and Règle du jeu at Centre Pompidou, Paris (2017). Group exhibitions span the Biennale of Sydney, Istanbul Biennial, Brooklyn Museum, MAXXI, National Art Center Tokyo, and the Photographers' Gallery, London, among many others. Her fifteen monographs include Brotherus Block Beuys (Kehrer Verlag, 2023/2024), Visitor (2023), and Seabound: A Logbook (2021).

She is represented by Martin Asbæk Gallery, Copenhagen, and Cámara Oscura Galería de Arte, Madrid.

More of her work may be appreciated on her website.

Portrait of the artist: © Riitta Supperi