Miehetär
Superhero academy
15,5 min
Screening:
Still here, playing with

Superhero Academy was the exhibitions center piece or a constitutional force. Ragnar has a superhero-like alter ego - Cheetah Man which is based on his felt connection with cheetahs. Elnyh and HEMULOORDI wanted to build an art work on this particular character with Rag’s idea of a Superhero Academy where Cheetah Man would be applying. Superhero Academy is something like a jury for masculinity where, like in reality-TV, people are competing in a successful performance of manhood. Superherodom is connected to a parody of masculine performance in the artt work but surprisingly “the invisible man” becomes the favourite pick of the jury, a man who has been stripped off all visible signs and signifiers of masculinity.
In the end, we all wanted act as applicants for the Superhero Academy, and eveybody brough their own characters, costumes and props to the shooting which was mostly improvised and reactive to impulses and ideas of the partakers.The "sixpacks, the merging of cardboard beer boxes and underpants were taken from an older Ilai Lehto’s art series. In the video Lehto dives into his sculpture “Talja” (Hide) which is made from skinned teddy bears and seen in the costume of tax bear. Lehto also worked on their sixpack-sculptures and Cheetah Man’s digital pixel version seen on the video.
HEMULOORDI polished the video to it’s ready form by editing and animating the whole session to it’s totality with an audio track. HEMULOORDI also animated the Superhero Academy jury and dubbed the lines for them.
Miehetär is a group formed by visual artists HEMULOORDI, Ilai Elias Lehto and Ragnar Elnyg. Miehetär focuses on the thematics of gender, manhood, and masculinity. Works are displayed separately and together. Miehetär shows have been featured at Oksasenkatu 11 gallery in Helsinki in 2023 and in Titanik gallery in Turku in 2022.
