Vilma Bader

As a Mauritian-born artist living on Gadigal land in Australia, my practice has long grappled with questions of place, displacement and ecological change. During the Saari Residence, I will develop hand-stitched textile works in response to Mynämäki and its surrounding landscape. My project will be an active but non-intrusive attempt towards an archaeology of place. I am interested in how human occupation shapes landscape and how landscape itself shapes people. The work will be shaped by walking, observing, gathering and encounters, as well as local narratives and reflective time within the residency’s surrounds. Using textile, hand stitching, layering and natural dyeing, I will experiment with compositions that build up texture and function as material records of time spent in place. I will draw on discarded or natural materials where appropriate. The residency will also allow me to consider what I encounter in Finland in relation to environmental changes that have shaped my experience elsewhere, for instance, rising water levels and coral bleaching in Mauritius, bushfires in Australia, and changing winters in Finland.

Vilma Bader is a Mauritian-born Australian artist living and working on Bidjigal and Gadigal Country. Her practice veers across mediums and disciplines that include painting, sculpture, textile and performance, often brought together through installation. Textile features prominently in her work and is entirely hand stitched, a method she values for its connection to the domestic and intimate, while reflecting the relationship between body and place. Walking also forms part of her practice as a way to experience and understand landscape. She has walked 1,530 km across northern Spain and Portugal, as well as 275 km through the desert of Central Australia. In recent years, her research and creative work have focused on localities and communities elsewhere through cross-cultural storytelling. Bader completed a Doctor of Philosophy (Visual Arts) at Sydney College of the Arts, the University of Sydney in 2013 on an Australian Postgraduate Award scholarship.