Fringe

Ekaterina Sharova is an art historian and a curator of Arctic Art Forum (Arkhangelsk, Russia), a leading meeting place for contemporary art and interdisciplinary experiments in Euro-Arctic Russia. She graduated from Pomor State University in Arkhangelsk in 2004 and received a Master’s Degree in Art History from the University of Oslo in 2012. Her curatorial projects include Mobile Institute. A Portable Lab for Knowledge Sharing (with r a k e t a / RAKETA_PRESS. Arkhangelsk Oblast; Art Salon Gallery, Arkhangelsk; Borey Art Center, Saint Petersburg, r a k e t a studio, Stockholm), exhibitions at Barents Spektakel Festival, Kirkenes, Norway (2015) and the Arctic Art Forum, Arkhangelsk, Russia (2016, 2017, 2018). In 2017, Arctic Art Forum was nominated to Innovation State Art Prize. Sharova has been a speaker at the National Museum of Norway (2014) and represented Euro-Arctic Russia at Garage Triennial of Russian Contemporary Art (2017) and NEMOSKVA (2018). In 2018, she has been an advisor for The Indigenous Quinquennial at National Gallery of Canada. She has also been an expert for a number of national contemporary art and culture competitions in Russia. Her current interests lie in the fields of ecology of culture, regenerative management and ecosystem for innovative cultural production in Arctic areas of Russia and the border area.

Dr. Alison Aune is a painter and Full Professor of Art Education at the University of Minnesota Duluth. Her work is inspired by Scandinavian patterns and motifs. It draws on a feminist aesthetic, honoring traditional folk arts and domestic arts. Many of her patterns are based on research of Scandinavian textiles and symbols, such as the eight-pointed star. Aune received her B.F.A. from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 1984, her M.A. from the University of Minnesota Duluth in 1987, and Ph.D. from Ohio University Athens in 2000. Aune has exhibited her artwork in over 70 solo and group exhibitions in the U.S, Sweden, Norway and Denmark and she regularly presents guest lectures and workshops internationally, nationally, and regionally.

Hildur Bjarnadottir is an Icelandic artist specializing in textiles. She creates her works from the ground up in an almost literal physical sense. Her raw materials are linen and wool yarns and silk fabric. She weaves and knits the linen and wool and dyes the silk. In one respect she has gone further than even the most dedicated crafts persons. For some of her works, which may truly be called investigations given the research and experiment involved, she has made her own natural dyes, gathered the plants, boiled them down, and extracted their juice as the basis of dyes for use in colouring her yarns. It is scarcely possible to imagine getting closer to the origin of a painting than to weave the canvas and colour it with one’s own dyes. Hildur Bjarnadóttir has systematically recorded, photographed, and collected the wild plants growing on her plot of land, such as angelica, tea-leaved willow, and meadowsweet, and made from them the dyes used in the works displayed here.

Gluklya’s (Natalia Pershina-Jakimanskaya) practice contests power structures in public urban space. Gluklya uses installations, performance, video, text and research to develop her concept of ‘fragility’ – a subject that should be interpreted not in the sense of ‘beauty,’ but in that of ‘invisible strength.’ In her projects, she addresses the personal stories of her characters, analysing them and revealing the conflict between political systems and a person’s inner world. Her work process is playful and her studio often turns into a meeting place where people work together on conceptualizing clothes and making other useable artistic items. Gluklya’s oeuvre speaks of indignation and hope. She makes us attentive of injustice and she proposes playful ways through which people can resist injustice. Her work points to hidden tactics that people might invent, with the help of the artist, to empower themselves and navigate through structures of repression.

Gunvor Guttorm is a professor in duodji (Sámi arts and crafts, traditional art, applied art) at Sámi allaskuvla/Sámi University of Applied Sciences, Guovdageaidnu/Kautokeino in Norway. Currently she is rector at the same institution. Her research is interconnected with cultural expression in the Sámi and indigenous societies, especially duodji. The focus of her research deals with duodji in a contemporary setting and the indigenous people’s context. She also has had the good fortune to work with elderly duodji artisans and share their knowledge of traditional techniques. This has indeed benefited her theoretical work. In her approach, she has also tried to understand duodji of today by discussing what position and meaning it has and has had for the Sámi.

Louise Harris has a degree in Fine Art from Oxford University and M.F.A. from Goldsmiths College. She qualified as a teacher and has been teaching and exhibiting since. Louise Harris is not a painter, a textile artist or a multimedia artist, and yet she is all these things. She is an artist first before any allegiance to any choice of media. This is because as an artist she does not see herself as the master of her medium, but rather she recognises that what she wants to achieve may only be possible through a dialogue with her chosen medium. In her textile work, which is the focus of this show, felting is always used to suggest biblical passages through the lyrical depiction of flower filled landscapes which are realised in a range of apparently fluidly gestural marks.  The images Louise creates in felt of “divine landscapes” are the result of lengthy enquiry, it might even be argued that this enquiry stretches as far back as her early childhood.

Dr. Maria Huhmarniemi is an artist and a teacher in the University of Lapland, Faculty of Art and Design. In her work as a visual artist, she engages with questions concerning the North, multi- and interculturalism and communality, as well as environmental issues such as the relationship between people and nature and environmental responsibility. She does installation art and environmental art. As a researcher she is interested in political contemporary art, art-based environmental education and collaboration of tourism and art. In her Doctoral theses (2016) she developed collaboration of artists and other researchers. 

Elina Härkönen works as an art education lecturer, at the University of Lapland. In her artistic practices she is interested in everyday cultural heritages especially in northern parts of Europe. During the past few years she has concentrated mainly on the connection between handcraft traditions and contemporary art. She has been organizing knitting circles in different contexts: art museum and art events. Her inspiration to wool and knitting comes from traditional patterns and the social phenomenon around knitting. She is also experimenting with natural dyes for wool as a community practice. 

Antti Jokinen is a Finnish visual artist and art teacher. He lives and works in Rovaniemi, Finland. As an artist, he mixes modern and traditional media into minimal and abstract art. He mainly focuses on printmaking and photography. In his artwork, there is a continual theme of exploring time and landscape. His artworks are studies and interpretations, where time, landscapes and presence are combined. For Jokinen, art is the practise of making emotions and thoughts visible, with the aim of delving deeper than the surface and even into spirituality.

Laila Susanna Kuhmunen lives in Jokkmokk, Sweden and is a Master’s degree student in duodji (meaning authentic Sámi artisanship) at theSámi allaskuvla/Sámi University of Applied Sciences, Guovdageaidnu/Kautokeino in Norway. During her time as a student she was given the opportunity to use traditional Sámi handicraft as well as being exposed to other materials and techniques found outside the Sámi handicraft context. In her work she expresses her Sámi background and culture by using different materials. She has a special interest in the traditional Sámi costume which she uses as a metaphor in an art installation in her coming examination project where relationships and cooperation are focused upon. In autumn 2019 she expects to receive her Master’s degree in duodji.

Ásthildur Jónsdóttir is an Icelandic artist, curator and art educator living in Geneva, Switzerland. Her interests include arts and cultural movements that support sustainability at all levels. For a number of years she has been involved with issues concerning the ecology of the planet. In her work she is concerned about places/environment, memories, recollection and identity through authorship and collaboration, questioning individuality, exploring what is unique and what is common. With her works, she wants to bring attention to how human interaction can further both the understanding and practice of wellbeing with respect to the integrity of nature. In later years, participation has played an essential role in her work. With participation, she creates settings for people to experience significance through actions performed in close connection with the spirits of nature. She often works with installations in contemporary context and with voices of participants from a selected place. With her works she wants to place the beauty of nature on the pedestal it deserves and emphasize its important role in how we perceive our reality, our knowledge, our values, our well-being and the quality of our lives.

Maarit Magga is an artist and duodji expert. She has a Master’s degree in Duodji and now she is working as Phd Candidate in Duodji in Sámi University College. She has a long experience in traditional duodji. In her recent artistic work, she has oriented to a new field in which she combines crafts and literature; she tells stories through embroidery. She has featured work in a number of exhibitions on Sàmi handcraft and culture in the Nordic countries and elsewhere in Europe. She also holds many positions of trust in the Sámi culture.

Miia Mäkinen is Finnish visual artist who works and lives in Rovaniemi. She manages various painting techniques from traditional watercolour painting to street art painting with spray paints. In her artistic work, she can also combine craft techniques such as embroidery in her watercolour paintings. In her artwork, she wonders about current events in the Nordic region, especially Lapland, and she wants to take a stand through her art. Her colourful works of arts are dreamy reality paintings with an implication of injustice.

Jari Rinne has a background in live rock music and education. His works promote artistic ways of thinking with the methods typically used in corporate environments. Alongside his professional life, he is involved with playing in a band and sound-related projects. Some of Rinne’s latest works include Snow&Ice, combining real snow and ice with synthetic spaces, and Laserrinne, adopting a skiing slope as a canvas for reactive laser projections and kinetic light and sound works in urban space. The production and analysis of the knowledge and philosophical foundations of art-based research and innovations are the main interest of his works. He serves as the Innovations Manager on the Faculty of Art and Design at the University of Lapland.

Tapani Saraste is a visual artist currently studying art education at the University of Lapland and based in Rovaniemi, Finland. These days, he is way too into theory and studies to get any art done, though he likes to dabble in crafts and is also probably some kind of wizard. Tapani is currently interested in tabletop role-playing games as artwork, finishing his comic project, improvisation as practice, getting back to painting on linen instead of a MDF board, some more embroidery, student-centred art education, physicality and the use of space, art as research, the terror behind feeble social constructs, the sun and grass.

Antti Stöckell lives in Rovaniemi and works as a lecturer at the University of Lapland on the Faculty of Art and Design. He graduated as an artist with a specialisation in sculpting and teaching art. He has also studied to be a nature and wilderness guide. In his artistic work, he focuses on working in nature and on the fields of environmental art and community art.

Ustina Yakovleva lives and works in Moscow and Berlin. Graduated from Moscow State Pedagogical University (Graphics Faculty, 2009) and in the same year graduated from the Institute of Contemporary Art, Moscow. Ustina was resident in Gridchinhall residency, NCCA residency in Kronstadt, Zarya residency in Vladivostok. Ustina works in mediums of drawing, painting, and sculpture. Sometimes they are abstract forms, sometimes they resemble organic forms and organisms: corals, algae, molecules and embryos. Time is always an important factor in her art, she is allowing the works to grow and develop by their inner rules, in a way similar to the mechanisms of nature.