Narva Art Residency announces the artists who will participate in the 2024 residency program, selected from more than 300 applicants. Many of them will deal with Narva’s history or geopolitical situation and will involve local people in their work. The artists who will travel the furthest to come to Narva are from Zimbabwe, Chile, and Australia.
The artists-in-residence were selected by a jury of experts from home and abroad, including German comic artist and NART resident Elke Renate Steiner, Helsinki-based curator and art residency researcher Adel Kim, Narva Art Residency director Johanna Rannula, photographer and EKA professor Marge Monko, and the head of Tartu Artists’ Association Peeter Talvistu. Creative Europe’s Culture Moves Europe programme supports 3 artists who create public space installations in the city of Narva, and the jury included Narva’s chief architect Peeter Tambu and Andres Ojari, head of the architecture department at the Estonian Academy of Arts.
In addition to the artists participating in the main programme, several artists will also come to NART in the framework of various collaborative projects. As mentioned, three artists will be funded by Creative Europe. Two Finnish artists are coming to Narva for three-month residencies supported by the Finnish Cultural Foundation. The BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art (Gateshead, England) will be sending an artist from the North East of England to Narva in March 2024. For the first time, a residency is planned for an EKA staff member. The residencies of the Kreenholm Garden and the Narva Venice Embassy, that are supported by the British Council, will also continue, etc. Separate open calls are announced for finding artists for those residencies.
This list includes all 11 artists participating in the main programme and the artists already confirmed for the collaborative projects. In total, there will be approximately 25 residencies in 2024.
Zacharaha Magasa is an artist from Zimbabwe. In Narva, she creates large-scale sculptures made from car tires and runs workshops for local people. Zakharaha’s work is motivated by stories of migration, as he was born into a family of parents who fled unrest in Mozambique and later moved to South Africa.
Artist duo Kristiin Hanimägi and Joel Freeman come to the residency to build a camera obscura in an abandoned house in Narva. This fascinating form of analogue photography invites us to reflect on the city’s history and memory. Kristiin works as an archivist at the Estonian Heritage Board and teaches analogue photography at the TYPA museum. Joel lives in Los Angeles and works in bookbinding.
Irena Tischenko and Tetiana Pavliuk are a duo of Ukrainian artists. In Narva they are building an installation called “Watchtower”. The work is inspired by simple wooden towers known from Ukrainian history, which were used to let the locals know of incoming warriors.
Mark Wingrave is an Australian artist who is coming to Narva to collaborate with Estonian poet Larissa Joonas. Mark plans to translate her poems from Russian into English, and create a series of paintings reflecting this process.
Birgit Szepanski is a German artist exploring the story of Amalie Kreisberg, who worked in a Kreenholm factory in the early 20th century. Amalie took an active part in the workers’ uprisings. The collected stories will be told in public walks.
Andries De Lange is a Belgian artist whose work focuses on social and collective creating process. In the residency, this can take many forms, such as workshops, dinners or public community kitchens.
Josefina Mellado is a visual artist from Chile. In 2019, her home country experienced a year of unrest, in which feminist movements played an important role. Inspired by this, her residency aims to explore how to take care of oneself in a politically unstable time. In Narva Josefina will organise workshop on how to make ‘bath bombs´.
Masha Pryven is a Ukrainian artist who has studied literature in the US and photography in Berlin and plans to involve young people from Narva in her work. Together, they will create a photo book of objects that reflect the essence of the city.
Ikuru Kuwajima is a Japanese artist whose work has taken him to Central Asia and Eastern Europe over the past 17 years. At NART, he will open a pop-up exhibition of his art project on the Baltic Sea, inspired by Bruno Taut, a German architect who lived in exile in Japan in the 1930s.
Jacobus North is a German musician and artist who plans to fill empty advertising spaces in Narva with images that will resonate with local residents. Jacobus also wants to investigate if these advertising spaces could become permanent exhibition spaces for artists’ work.
Chloe Kelly lives in Berlin and London, and her work in Narva will be expressed through workshops. She will study the facades of houses in Narva. Chloe will explore how Narva residents relate to existing buildings and how they would like to see their living environment in the future.
It will not be the first time for Pavel Rotts to work and live in NART, but this time he is in residence with the support of the Finnish Cultural Foundation. He will open his solo exhibition on the 80th anniversary of the bombing of Narva, which will also reflect the historical events. Pavel has roots of Ingian Finns, and his ancestors’ migratory route also passed through Estonia.
Another Finnish art resident coming to Narva is Miia Kettunen, an environmental and community artist. In Narva, she explores how locals relate to their land. Photographic portraits taken in cyanotype will be hung in public spaces.
Simon Whetham is an English artist whose residency will result in a large-scale public space installation made from old and broken household appliances, such as washing machines, donated by the community. This work is also a sound installation, and part of it will be created during workshops. Simon’s residency is supported by Creative Europe.
The same project will also bring Albanian artist Ledia Kostandini to Narva, who will draw on the history of Kreenholm and will work with the community. Ledia will create a mosaic-like textile work that will cover a large part of the façade of one of the buildings in Narva. Ledia learned textile art from her grandmother.
Kädi Talvoja is a senior research fellow and lecturer at EKA and will be the first EKA resident of NART. Kädi will use this time to write a chapter for the 7th volume of the History of Estonian Art. The chapter will discuss the most important exhibitions on the art of the Soviet period.
See the open call announcement here.
More information:
Johanna Rannula
johanna.rannula@artun.ee
59177795