The last residents of the year at the Saari Residence

Photo: Jussi Virkkumaa

An international group of artists currently working at the residence includes visual artists Titta Aaltonen (Finland), Alexandra Carter (USA), visual artist, biologist Krystyna Jędrzejewska-Szmek (Poland), artist Joshua Le Gallienne (Great Britain) and psychologist, film maker Mariangela Pluchino (Venezuela/Finland). The last residency period of the year will be implemented as a hybrid residency, and the artist working in the Saari Residence’s home residency is Gernot Wieland (Austria/Germany) .

The Helsinki based Finnish visual artis Titta Aaltonen is working on an art project dealing with the relationship between social class and education and the way education is gendered. In her artistic work, she is interested in the topics of social class and the identity of people and places. “During my residency, I intend to familiarise myself with the literature on this class issue and collect background material on the topic for an inclusive work of art.”

The US visual artist Alexandra Carter combines in her work research and ink paintings produced at Saari. She examines in her work titled “The Fruits of (In)fertility” bodily and agricultural fertility through the lens of personal experience. “Not only is my work imbued with ideas of fertility and fecundity of land and body, but also the role of mother, of birther, and the idea of the monstrous feminine as coined by author Barbara Creed.”

During her residency period, the Polish visual artist, researcher, biologist Krystyna Jędrzejewska-Szmek is exploring human–plant relationships and experimenting with sound and visual recordings and editing. Her work explores the close micro-sounds that are created when human bodies touch plant bodies. ”I plan to bridge all of this in a new performative workshop tentatively titled “The Professional Orchestra of Plant Amateurs”.

At the Saari Residence, the British artist Joshua Le Gallienne will adopt the theme of ‘immateriality’ to examine how air (and gases in general) can be utilised in the creation and perception of sound. “My artistic practice examines the core processes of sound creation and perception, focusing on the relationships between the audible and inaudible; visible and invisible; material and immaterial. Air is the primary medium in which sound travels, but what other roles can it play in perception?” The primary goal of their artistic practice is to present contexts in which meaningful experiences with acoustic sound can be encountered as directly as possible.

The Venezuelan psychologist and filmmaker based in Helsinki, Mariangela Pluchino examines in her work gender, identity, and otherness. Her work is framed within an intersectional queer feminist approach. During her residency at Saari, Mariangela focus in writing the script and production for a new short fiction film.

Austrian artist based in Berlin; Gernot Wieland is working in the Saari Home Residency. He is doing background research for his new video project. His work often combines historical events with seemingly personal memories where fact and fiction blend. The resulting narratives are complex, beginning with private issues and almost accidentally outlining problems in society. ”During my residency period, my goal is to work out this “other”, which underlies in my every film and which appears so strongly in both stories, and to place it in the context of the German and Austrian past and transferred, social, political and psychological processes.”