Sasha Huber shoots back at racial profiling with portraits of iconic figures

IN PARTNERSHIP:

Sasha Huber. Picture: Press photo

Famous faces lined the walls of the Korjaamo Gallery in Helsinki on Saturday as Sasha Huber shared her insights behind the project, Shooting Stars.

Shooting Stars is an alphabetised collection of influential faces of selected individuals who were murdered for political, philosophical, and even ethnical reasons.

Among the portraits are iconic heroic figures such as the American Civil Rights Movement leader, Martin Luther King (1925–1965), the leader of the Indian Independence Movement, Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948), and the former Swedish prime minister, Olof Palme (1927–1986).

Huber, a Swiss-born artist with Haitian heritage, has been working between Helsinki and Zurich since 2002 when she first came to Finland to study graphic design at Aalto University.

Currently writing her doctoral thesis, regarding racism through the eyes of an artist, Huber protests prejudice and violence in many of her creative projects.

Aggressive shape

The construction process however, suggests that the portraits have further meaning beyond the aesthetic value of the finished product.

She says it’s her opportunity to “shoot back.”

Picture: Conner Mckissack for Finland Today

The images are framed by small three-dimensional boxes with a silver coating on the front.

Protruding through the coating, are countless staples creating the line-work responsible for the portraits themselves.

Huber describes the stapling process as an “isolated and aggressive” method for drawing the images but suggests that once all the safety equipment is in place, she’s in her own world, where she can respond physically to the violence that lead to these deaths.

She says it’s her opportunity to “shoot back.”

Awareness reduces injustice

Citing the case of Trayvon Martin, a 17-year-old African-American who was gunned down by a neighbourhood watch volunteer named George Zimmerman, who was later acquitted of both second- degree murder charges and manslaughter, Huber went on to talk about the absurd nature of these killings and urged awareness and education as a method for reducing injustice.