Marcello the Dog and More-Than-Human Family in Elina Brotherus's Self-Portraits from the Series Carpe Fucking Diem
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.23984/fjhas.99338Keywords:
self-portrait, dog, companion species, non-human, agency, familyAbstract
This article examines the possibilities of visual culture to open new perspectives on interspecies relations by analyzing self-portraits from visual artist Elina Brotherus’s photography series Carpe Fucking Diem (2011–2015). Brotherus has suggested that this series talks “about a failure to have a family with kids and give normality the finger”. The self-portraits can be seen to address this “failure” to have a normative nuclear family, while simultaneously questioning the desirability of the norm itself through Brotherus’s relationship with her pet dog, dachshund Marcello. The article explores the more-than-human notions of kinship and family in Carpe Fucking Diem, drawing on Donna Haraway’s concept of companion species, as well as discussions on new materialism and posthumanism. The concept of companion species deconstructs human exceptionalism and the boundaries between human and animal, and indicates that the physical and affective co-becomings between humans and the non-human significant others co-evolve with each other in complex and asymmetrical ways. In affective and embodied readings of three self-portraits and one video work from the Carpe Fucking Diem series, I examine how Elina Brotherus’s self-portraits call into question the normative notions of family as human-centered and heteronormative.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2021 Tiina Salmia

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
When sending a manuscript the author(s) accept the digital publishing contract (please open the link and read it!). The publishing contract covers the publication of the manuscript on the digital versions of the Trace journal according to the Open Access principles and the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license [https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/]. (NB! Changed on January 28, 2020!) The conditions allow the author to retain copyright to his/her work and anyone to copy and distribute it for free in any medium and form, changed or unchanged provided that appropriate credit to author(s) is given, a link provided to the license, and any changes are indicated. Information on copyright issues in Finland is given by Kopiosto.
Trace is a scientific journal that doesn't pursue economic gain. Instead, the purpose of the publishing contract is to acknowledge the moral rights of the author(s) to their work and make possible the distribution of results of scientific research in the Trace journal in print as well as in digital form.
The license concerning the metadata of published articles is Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0).
More information about open science in Finland:
