Artist Riitta Ikonen will give a lecture and gallery talk as part of the “Eyes as Big as Plates” exhibit.

Artist Riitta Ikonen will give a lecture and gallery talk as part of the “Eyes as Big as Plates” exhibit.

The show, including 26 photographs, a collaborative project Ms. Ikonen began with Karoline Hjorth in 2011, continues through April 13 in the Cathy and Jesse Marion Art Gallery, located in the Michael C. Rockefeller Arts Center.

Ikonen will present the Visiting Artist Program lecture Friday from 4 to 5:30 p.m., in McEwen Hall Room 209. The talk in the Marion Art Gallery will be on Saturday at 10 a.m.

Both lecture and gallery talk are free and open to the public.

The images, dated from 2011 to 2024, were created in nine countries: Austria, the Faroe Islands of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Senegal, South Korea, Tasmania and the United States (in New York and Colorado).

The unique images combine performance, wearable sculpture, photography and anthropology, and are about climate change, environmental stewardship and dismantling stereotypes of age, gender and nationality. Ikonen will talk about the concepts of, and stories behind, the “Eyes as Big as Plates” photographs and provide a behind-the-scenes look at the duo’s process.

Beginning as a play on characters from Nordic folklore, “Eyes as Big as Plates” evolved into a continual search for modern human’s belonging to nature, according to the Eyes as Big as Plates website. Each image in the series presents a solitary figure in a landscape, dressed in elements from surroundings that indicate neither time nor place. Nature acts as both content and context: characters literally inhabit the landscape wearing sculptures they create in collaboration with the artists.

In the second book dedicated to the series, the artists wrote, “We live on one planet, and each image helps us slow down, see and feel deeply. Each image evokes the precarious splendor of being alive and helps us reflect on how to be in this world.”

Ikonen received her B.A. from the University of Brighton and her M.A. from Royal College of Art in London. Raised in Finland, she now lives and works in New York City and London.

Ikonen has exhibited her work at Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma in Helsinki, London 2012 Olympic Park, Seibu Shibuya in Tokyo, Winzavod Art Center in Moscow, Hockney Gallery and the annual RCA Secret exhibition at Royal College of Art, Photographer’s Gallery, Tate Britain, Gulbenkian Foundation headquarters, and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

In 2020, Ikonen and Hjorth presented a Ted Talk about their “Eyes as Big as Plates” collaboration.

Gallery hours are Tuesday through Thursday, noon to 4 pm; Friday and Saturday, noon to 6 p.m.; Sunday, noon to 4 p.m.; and by appointment. The gallery is closed on Mondays and during Spring Break, March 14 through March 23.

To schedule a free group or class tour, contact Barbara Racker, at (716) 673-4897, or email barbara.racker@fredonia.edu. Complimentary exhibition catalogs are available at the Marion Art Gallery.

Support for the exhibition, lecture and gallery talk has been furnished by the Carnahan Jackson Fund for the Humanities and the Marion Endowment Fund, both through the Fredonia College Foundation, Friends of Rockefeller Arts Center, and Department of Visual Arts and New Media.