Tatjana Bergelt - Kone Foundation

Barfuss im Schnee – paljoin jalloin lumessa (working title)

I was raised bilingual and got influenced by two strong cultures, German and Russian-Jewish. I lived and studied in many countries before moving to Finland in 1998. My bilingual education and ability to speak several languages gave me the opportunity to include those into my work.

During my residency I want to work on my artists’ book “Barfuss im Schnee” with poems by Nils Aslak Valkeapää.

NAV (Nils Aslak Valkeapää) is certainly on the most famous Saami writers. By translating his poems and showing them in my work, I can contribute to spread the awareness and knowledge about Northern Saami language and Saami existens as such.

Besides collages, paintings and stone lithografies I have been also doing artists‘ books since 20 years. They naturally follow the line of narratives which question self-defined identity, our collective memory and political consciousness.

Language is also a reason why people do not understand each other. Therefore I am consciously using the rhythm and graphic structure of letters and fonts as a visual element within my work. I am overlapping metaphors, initiated by words with a variety of images. I am playing with duration and fragmentation, incorporating the codex of the book to present a window of time.