Grants and residencies

Arts

Independent artistic work such as studio based practice related to painting

Application summary

I work within the field of painting with focus on fragments of figurations that I use to form narratives. Currently I am keen on exploring different ways to treat pictures, especially images derived or connected to digital popular culture in relation to images telling stories about myths and stories related to female figures. I am also interested in combining figurations that are more arcane with narrative ones. I tend to simplify, crop, zoom in and seek for flatness in my paintings/installations, like a cartoon’s flat aesthetics and playing with the naive and banal without compromising on the seriousness that is also present in my works. What interests me is the mixture of emotions, images, environments, both physical and non-physical (internet) that are woven together into an associative play, a swirl of information. One specific project I will carry out during a working grant period goes by the working title Ferine and deals with thoughts on the constructed female persona. I am especially interested in imageries connected to the female persona/body perceived in online popular culture on social media. I am intrigued about using stereotypical visuals that (may) refer to the female body and character but by twisting the narrative of the picture through my paintings so that their are read as something murkier than just the first indication of perfection and bliss. By using the allure of the first shimmery surface and to let it mutate into something that also contains connections to weird, dark and uncomfortable feelings. Feelings touching upon fears, longings, sadness, anger, obnoxious and humour in a versatile and odd way that I think can evoke questions or affiliate around current issues and phenomenas regarding body and presence. Synonyms for name Ferine are for instance feral, vile, savage. For me the word in this context refers to perception and possibilities to defence or aggression.

I started my one year working grant for Kone in March 2022 and the last grantee month was in Februari 2023. For me the working grant meant a year of full time working in my studio toward my solo exhibition at Gallery Huuto in Helsinki 10.3-2.4.2023 that had the name "The Mage's keep". The exhibiton consisted of oil paintings I made during my grant year 2022/2023.

My ideas to the exhibition had much to do with the thoughts on painting, installation, narratives and fragmentations. I started my working process with quite clear thought on things I felt connected to my work such as words or other reference materials. I had these ideas regarding images derived or connected to digital popular culture in relation to images telling stories about myths and stories related to female figures. Also one continues interest in my working process is figuration and what figurative painting is or can be. How also surfaces or more arcane forms and colors still can be perceived as figurative or connected to a narrative.

During my working processes some of the thoughts I had when writing for funds became more of a backdrop and other things emerged to the surface. Painting is a strange medium in a sense that, at least for me as painter, it is often starting with some clear thoughts but during work it often goes in different paths I can’t always express verbally. Paint has a physical presens that surround you while working and it is not always so clear to me as a painter how much of an agent the paint is and how much I'm the instrument and the other way around, me as an agent and the paint as a tool. It is a weird push and pull mix to paint and I think in a sense my grant year came to be much more about thoughts on painting than what I was originally planning but I am glad for that as it is pushing me forward in my practice.

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