Pinar Yolacan will present in her exhibition ´Perishables´ a series of photographic portraits produced within a project spanning over three years. The artist has combined fashion design, laborous handicraft and tradition of fine art portraiture with elements decay in an extremely delicate, emphatic and imaginative way.

The portraits feature white women in their 70s, or older, posing to the camera in a manner so familiar from advertisements of perfumes, fashion clothing or hair care products in any mainstream media today. Pinar Yolacan´s models, found through agencies, newspapers and online ads, were measured and a unique dress was designed and tailor made for each of them from animal flesh.

In a project with visuals otherwise so accessible, the choice of materials for the clothing will serve as a starting point for complex and challenging investigations into our perceptions of beauty and detraction, adornment and aversion, corporality and morality and finally - of life and death.

Pinar Yolacan was born in Ankara, Turkey in 1981. She has studied fashion design in the Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design and arts in the Chelsea School of Art & Design in London and graduated in Fine Art from Cooper Union School of Fine Art in New York. Pinar Yolacan lives and works in New York. This is her first exhibition in Finland. During December 2007 – January 2008 Pinar Yolacan is participating in the HIAP – Helsinki International Artist-in-residence Programme.