Stuck
Emma Huoso
University of the Arts Helsinki
In Stuck (orig. Juuttunut), Emma Huoso explores tension, control and the quiet pressure of inherited gestures, stereotypes and feminine-coded craft traditions. The project brings together painting, embroidery, textile and a constructed frame to question what happens when embroidery enters painting not as decoration, but as an active material force. The work developed through material tests, sketches and technical experiments with linen, oil paint, embroidery and scale. A small embroidery hoop was transformed into an oversized structure, enlarged far beyond the scale of the hand. It still carries the memory of a familiar craft tool, but at this size it becomes something stranger: a frame, an ornament and a structure of control. Inside the circular painting, a Rapunzel-like figure is caught in a tower-like scene. Her braid is trapped in the hoop and continues beyond the image, spreading across the surrounding linen. She points a gun towards another figure outside the frame, whose raised hands suggest both the intimate act of braiding and a gesture of surrender. The braid physically connects them, turning hair into a site of attachment, care, threat and restraint. The final work shifts between painting, embroidery, textile and illusion. Wrinkled fabric extends onto the wall, while painted shadows blur the boundary between material surface and pictorial space. Thin brushstrokes begin to resemble thread, and embroidered linen threads begin to construct the image. The project is shown alongside the painting series Stage 1–4 (orig. Vaihe 1–4), where oil paint and embroidery meet on a smaller scale. Through hands, hair, measuring tape, cosmetic tools and pink embroidered fabric, the series reflects on gestures of preparation, beauty, measurement and control. The recurring pink is not simply soft or decorative. It carries associations of cosmetics, girlhood, artificial sweetness and feminine performance, while also becoming excessive, uneasy and bodily. Together, the works move between softness and threat, craft and painting, decoration and discomfort.