Born in 1979 in Helsinki and raised in Finland, Nyari came to New York City at the age of seventeen. While there, she studied at the School of Visual Arts, where she not only began to model but found her passion for photography. Using inspiration from masters such as Helmut Newton and Cindy Sherman, Nyari’s work employs and explores the traditional ideal of beauty and gender to portray sexuality from a predominately female perspective. She utilizes technical elements such as gestures, nudity, the subject’s gaze, objects, and more to link this connection of the empowered feminine identity. Her work has been exhibited in numerous galleries throughout the United States and Europe. Through such exposure, she has received multiple prestigious awards, including the first-place winner of the International Photography Awards in 2010, Beauty Pro Category. Her 225-page Monograph titled “Femme Fatale: Female Erotic Photography” is published in 6 languages and sold worldwide.

“Ink Stories”, which was introduced at Nyari’s very first solo gallery exhibit, consists of large-scale nude photographs that explore the concept of self-identity and female empowerment. The series joins six women together, each who has faced adversity, to demonstrate the creation of a strengthened self-image through tattoos. By highlighting the intricate woven threads of ink on each woman’s skin, Nyari proposes the idea that self-empowerment and reconciliation with one’s traumas can be linked to the act of greeting one’s “own skin” or inventing their own story.

Nyari has now elevated these intimate photographs in her new Punctured Ink series through the process of puncturing botanical-like references into the surface of each image (thus making each one of a kind). Her inspiration to physically puncture the previously pristine photographic prints stemmed from a childhood memory that occurred while she was living in Finland: “I remembered my parents had this big pad of paper next to the home phone in Finland, and I would use my mother’s sewing needles to poke patterns into the paper”.

This nostalgic memory, in combination with the longing to apply her physical, painterly abilities, resulted in the choice to transform these photographs by puncturing the paper. Unlike painting or drawing on the surface of each print, the raised, brail-like holes are created to leave a permanent result, just as a tattoo does on one’s skin. While the surface of an artwork, like skin, is typically preserved and or avoided, Nyari follows in the subject’s footsteps by purposely destroying the pristine surface in order to create a new narrative. The act taps into a long history of tribal scarification, which signified a right of passage, permitting the individual to transcend their past traumas and transform their evolved selves. This notion grounds all of her works.

In addition, Nyari’s choice to puncture nature-based patterns into each portrait also has its own significance. She stated that when “talking about scarification and getting over trauma, to me, nature is one of the most healing and beautiful elements.”

As Nyari emphasizes through her photographs, when you add a personal story onto the skin, it is a whole new layer that often becomes biographical. It translates a story to the audience of one’s past, future, and wishes. While this concept existed in her previous photographic series, now, through puncturing the surface of each, Nyari is adding another layer of permanence to her works’ meaning, therefore becoming, as she calls it, “ink cubed”.