Lumi Tuomi

 Kezriäjy (work in progress)

Kezriäjy refers to the presence of handcrafts in Karelian everyday life, and investigates how spinning stories in Karelian culture has been practiced through craft. In their newest body of work, Tuomi portrays a narrative through their family’s Karelian heritage and family land(scapes), delicately intertwining traditional Karelian crafts and photography. They emphasise photography and traditional craft as tools used in exchanging stories and cultural inheritance between individuals and generations.

What happens when the act of photographing begins from planting a linen seed in grandmother’s garden, learning to embroider a esliina from a photograph of your grandmother’s grandmother or gathering leftover hair from your mother’s hairbrush? How can creating and learning be as important and present as the final photograph?

But also, what is the relationship between intergenerational trauma and being photographed and studied by those outside of your community? And how can photography begin to address and heal that?