The Saari Fellows in March and April

In March and April, the Saari Residence has hosted the artists Kajsa Gullberg (Denmark), Paul Kalemba (Australia), Tiia Kasurinen (Finland), Teemu Korpela (Finland), Maija Linturi (Finland), Juhani Räisänen (Finland), Mireia c. Saladrigues (Spain) and the Artist at Risk artists Saddam Jumaily (Iraq) and Kholod Hawash (Iraq). The Saari Invited ArtistKevin Doyle (Ireland/USA) is working at the residence until the end of April.

In March and April, the Saari Residence has hosted 10 artists from different fields.

Artist Kajsa Gullberg (Denmark) has been working on a project that includes two books within the same project. The project is called The Swinger Club – the Ultimate Sexual Safe Space for Women. The swinger club is a place where women can enjoy any kind of sex they want without the risk of getting raped, assaulted or slut shamed. One book contains pictures, and the other documents the process in the form of an interview.

In his art, artist Paul Kalemba (Australia) examines the concepts of nature and ecology in the anthropocene through objects he has found and still life compositions. He finds inspiration for his works from the natural sciences and contemporary environmental philosophy, as well as narrative, phenomena and absurd situations based on objects. At the Saari Residence, he has searched and collected lost objects in the area surrounding the manor and uses them to make various compositions, and explores Finnish forest-related myths.

Dancer, choreographer and artist Tiia Kasurinen explores the themes of identity, gender, power and pop culture, often through make-up and visual transformation. At the Saari Residence, she has studied the encounters of makeup and movement. She is interested in the physical experience resulting from the direct or long-term effects of transformation.

During his residency, painter Teemu Korpela has contemplated and examined ways in which we can see things that are invisible through art and especially the significance of global processes for the traditions of materials and content in painting.

Our Artists at Risk residents, artist, critic and professor Saddam Jumaily (Iraq) and his wife, textile artist Kholod Hawash (Iraq), have been working in Mynämäki since the beginning of March. After the Saari Residence, they will attend a residence funded by the Saastamoinen Foundation in Helsinki. Then the couple will continue at the new AR-ICORN Safe Haven Helsinki Residence, funded by the City of Helsinki, until the end of the year. The Saari Residence began its AR residence cooperation with Perpetuum Mobile in 2017. It consists of a residency of three months in total, involving a two-month work period at the Saari Residence in Mynämäki and a month in Helsinki funded by the Saastamoinen Foundation. The Artists at Risk residencies are primarily aimed at visual art professionals, whose freedom of expression and lives are threatened due to their artistic activities.

Saddam Jumaily is best known as a painter who depicts the ongoing chaos that the peoples of his home region have had to endure for the past two decades. Kholod Hawash’s art form is patchwork, and in her work she presents the everyday craft skills of Iraqis and the peoples from the surrounding region. In her work, she borrows the techniques and imagery of Iraqi folk traditions.

Puppet theatre artist and director Maija Linturi has worked on the background research and script of her forthcoming work called Decomposition, as well as on the concept design of the associated series of works. She is investigating what the removal of focus away from the human and the human experience could mean in the context of a performance.

Composer, poet and artist Juhani Räisänen has developed his new instrument called the zorm and has experimented with using his own poems, among others, as part of the instrument’s soundscape.

Researcher and visual artist Mireia c. Saladrigues has spend her time at the Saari Residence working on her research, which is funded by Kone Foundation and called Behaving Unconventionally in Gallery Settings.  Alteration in Cultural Practices for Rearticulating Relations among Makers, Objects, Audiences and (Virtual) Museums. In it she documents and promotes human and non-human cases of transformation and peculiarities in cultural practices by presenting an artistic and theoretical interpretation of non-adaptability. She will also give performative talk at Titanik Gallery, Turku on Friday 26 April called Meet the Artist: Mireia c. Saladrigues – WE COULD HAVE TURNED OURSELVES INTO SUGAR.