Our past belongs to us but at the same time it slips away – it is out of reach, gone, but at once part of our present and of our future. Pictures, especially photographs, are a strong link to our past in that they help to recall our memories. Already with her first series Growth, Wilma Hurskainen started to investigate childhood and childhood memories through the use of photography. Using pictures of her family album, she recreated certain situations from old photographs and re-photographed them. The outcome was a visual dialogue between the past and the present. 

With her work The Woman Who Married a Horse, Wilma Hurskainen's reference to childhood is still relevant but less obvious. The series features young women in contrived cowgirl scenery. Horses, stables, and prairies, all photographed in saturated colors and soft light, comprise the settings for these highly romantic pictures. The story behind the photographs refers to the artist's memories of novels for girls and of her girlish fantasies. In her work Wilma Hurskainen creates fictions in which she plays out these fantasies. By combining past and present she creates a timeless space in which she and her sisters can reenact their childhood memories and finally live out their long lost dreams.

Wilma Hurskainen was born in Vantaa, Finland, in 1979 She lives and works in Helsinki. Hurskainen graduated from Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture in 2007. Selected exhibition include a solo show at the Northern Photographic Centre, Oulu, Finland (2013), and at Matadero Madrid, Contemporary Art Center (2014), as well as group shows such as Ages, Landesgalerie Linz (2013) and Touching Dreams, the National Museum of Photography, Copenhagen (2011).