Image by Adelaide Maher, Tokyo, Japan, July 2023
Anastasia Artemeva is a visual and socially-engaged artist based in Helsinki. Her projects explore and make space for new interactions.
Conceptually, the works are based on codes of social norms and accepted truths, which are influenced by socio-political, cultural and personal limitations and boundaries. Her work explores collective everyday rituals like going camping, storing items in the basement, and placing people in prisons - practices that are considered normal. Anastasia is interested in boredom and ordinariness, not dreary, not beautiful, but kind of plain gestures that go unnoticed yet are the strangest and the most violent, or the most kind.
Her practice is focused on temporary spaces: how we inhabit them, how we co-exist in them, how spaces and their histories affect us and how we affect them. How people survive, live, and make themselves at home even in the most challenging and isolated environments. Spaces for antisocial behaviour, such as streets, prisons and schools are particularly precious subjects. Anastasia works with art installations, text, sound, and textile. She creates artwork for theatrical productions and conducts art workshops.
Anastasia graduated from Limerick School of Art and Design (Ireland) with a BA in 2012, and from Aalto University (Finland) with a Masters degree in 2016. Her recent projects include Prison Outside - art and research work on issues of incarceration. Anastasia has received training in Criminology, as well as Human Rights protection studies, and Diversity in arts. She has worked in collaboration with Helsinki Prison (Helsingin Vankila), Finnish foundation for support of ex-offenders(Kriminaalihuollon tukisäätiö), M-cult, Performance center Esitystaiteen Keskus, International School of Helsinki, amongst many other institutions. Artemeva has written for the Visual Artist’s News Sheet, Paper Visual Art and IMAGE InSEA: International Society for Education through Art magazine. She is currently studying car mechanics.
Please see the artist’s CV here.
An overview of previous workshops is here.
anastasia.artemeva(at)outlook.com
info(at)prisonspace.org