Delulu
2023/24
It’s September in Mustarinda and I spend most of my residency in the bedroom.
There I sit in the armchair nursing my younger daughter.
She is not that small anymore and I was hoping I will get a lot done.
I stare at the wall, at the doors of the wardrobe, at the floor, at the ceiling.
The light is coming from the window.
There is a forest.
The older child is next to us in the cot nesting, coming to terms that she is not the only one anymore.
It’s time to go home and I hop in my car and I stop to nurse and I ride the train and I stop to nurse and doesn’t it all start with love.
Translation to the Finnish by Matias Loikala
Mustarinda Magazine 2024
“Correspondence”
Japanese Silk, Cotton, wood, thread, 9 x 13 cm.
Published in: Mustarinda Magazine 2024,
Editorial team: Neal Cahoon, Miina Kaartinen, mirko nikolić, and Anu Pasanen
Graphic design:
Thank you to Mustarinda residency, September 2023 and especilally to
Images by Anastasia Artemeva
Natural Disaster Preparation
Tokyo, Japan
with Steve Maher, 2023
Artemeva and Maher take us to Japan where they created their collaborative project developed in 2023 while Anastasia was undertaking residency with Arts Initiative Tokyo, supported by the Finnish Cultural Foundation. Together with Steve Maher, they document human anticipation of natural and man-made catastrophe. Anastasia Artemeva and Steve Maher work collaboratively to present an artistic reflection of disaster preparation as it is culturally formatted in the metropolis of Tokyo city, where commodities for averting apocalyptic futures are as banally presented as any other consumer domestic products.
Images by author, Lauri Niskanen, Annika Niskanen, Nora Prits.
Please read more about the residency:
https://skr.fi/en/news/four-artists-awarded-grants-to-foreign-residencies/
https://www.a-i-t.net/en/blog/p16905/
Don't avoid me at the vast, mean, ethereal space
Eoin O’Dowd, Anastasia Artemeva & Steve Maher
Galleria Loisti
16.-29.10.24
exhibition is realised together with Eoin O’Dowd https://www.eoi
n-odowd.com/ and features his recent works.
Eoin O'Dowd's ongoing work invites viewers to examine the complex relationship between labor capital relations and the multifaceted impacts—physical, psychological, and spiritual—that arise from this dynamic. It addresses the exploitation of both physical and intellectual labor while questioning the absence of communal and spiritual value in our increasingly consumer-driven and alienating society. Using reclaimed factory materials, field recordings and devotional symbolism - their work highlights the spiritual damage caused by working conditions and the exploitation of workers' bodies and souls, reflecting a deepening wound on our collective psyche.
Each artist challenges societal expectations and conventions, often focusing on seemingly ordinary or mundane activities to reveal underlying power dynamics or hidden injustices.
Thank you https://skr.fi/en/ , https://www.a-i-t.net/en/, Eoin O’Dowd https://www.eoi
n-odowd.com/
Asemkaava
2023Seinäjoki Railway Station, Finland
August 2023
Participatory public artwork / community embroidery
Invited by artists Alan Bulfin and Pii Anttila as part of Generous Autonomy.
Seinäjoki is a regional city in South Ostrobothnia, western Finland, around 360 km north of Helsinki. The city developed around an important railway junction, making the station a significant part of both its history and everyday life.
Asemakaava took place at a moment when the station area was undergoing major redevelopment and the existing railway station was due to be demolished. I wanted to create a temporary space where people could stop, spend time together and leave a physical trace of their relationship with a place that was about to disappear.
During one weekend, I invited passengers, local residents, railway users and passers-by to collectively embroider a map of Seinäjoki railway station and its surroundings.
The project operated as an open, drop-in artwork. No previous experience was required. Someone could contribute a few stitches while waiting for a train, stay for a longer conversation, or come specifically to participate.
Embroidery introduced a deliberately slow and tactile process into a space normally defined by movement, schedules, arrivals and departures. As people worked, conversations emerged about travelling, memories of the station, the city and its transformation.
Each participant added a small individual gesture. Together, these gestures gradually formed a collective record of the station — not an accurate geographical map, but a map shaped by memory, encounters, time and human presence.
Asemakaava continued my interest in temporary and transitional spaces, participation and the ways people make places their own. The railway station became, briefly, not only somewhere to pass through but somewhere to stop, make and be together.
Support: Finnish Cultural Foundation
The Book of Hands
Käsikirja is a multidisciplinary event aimed at children from 4 years old onwards and their adults. The project focuses on exploring the significance of hands in various contexts and through different art disciplines. Participants will engage in activities such as drawing, dancing, crafting, and creating stories to explore the multifaceted role of hands in artistic expression, communication and every day life. Together we’ll also reflect about how we interact with each other, how we can care for and support each other with our hands.
As part of the project we produced a workbook - and interactive zine, which can be used during the session or independently at home. The publication is in four languages - Finnish, English, Ukrainian and Russian.
The events is organized with the support of The City of Espoo, the City of Vantaa, Helsinki City and the Arts promotion center Finland.
Languages: English, Finnish, Russian, Ukrainian
Working group: Anna Anisimova, children’s writer; Anastasia Artemeva, visual and socially-engaged artist; Tetiana Makhova, visual artist; Vera Lapitskaya, dance artist
Anastasia Artemeva (b.1989) is a visual and socially-engaged artist based in Helsinki. BA in Sculpture & Combined Media, Limerick School of Art & Design, Ireland (2012), MA Visual Culture & Contemporary Art. She works with textile, text, installation and photography. She is a diversity agent and a certified Dialogue cards facilitator.
Makhova Tetiana was born in 1987 in a small village in the Kherson region. Since childhood, she loved to draw and wanted to become an artist. She loves nature, fairy tales and mythology. This has always been reflected in her creative process. Higher education: - Kherson State University, bachelor's degree: Fine Arts, 2011 & Specialist degree: Fine Arts, Decorative Arts, Artistic Culture, 2012. For ten years after graduation, Makhova worked as a freelance artist, took part in exhibitions and festivals. Married. Mother of three children. During the military invasion in Ukraine on February 24, 2022, she found herself in deep within the occupied territory of Kherson region. After fleeing with her family to Finland, she began the restoration of her creative activity.
Since 2009, Vera Lapitskaya has worked both as an independent dance artist and in collaboration with various artists in Finland and internationally. She has implemented more than twenty dance projects aimed at different target groups. In her works Lapitskaya often combines dance and text, and creates works on the border between dance and theatre. In her artistic work she has been reimagining traditional art forms by pushing the borders and going beyond the surface of narrative meanings.Through the years she has been exploring a multi-layered proximity of human body to space, time, sounds, objects and environment. In her latest works Lapitskaya approached the following themes, among others: human loneliness and togetherness, identity, participation, difference, sameness, tolerance.
Anna Anisimova is a author of more than 13 books for children. She was born in 1983 in the small village Kropotkin in Eastern Siberia and spent her childhood there, among little mountains called «goltsy» and cedar elfin, in a very cold place where people mine gold—her book Kedrovyi Slonik (Cedar Little Elephant) tells about this place. Anna studied at Novosibirsk State University that is located in a Siberian scientific center called Akademgorodok. She is a journalist by diploma specialty. But while studying at the university Anna worked on the creation of newspapers for children and also she worked in the children's camps and created stories with children. Therefore when she started working as a journalist and editor she realized that writing for children is the thing that she like to do the most. So last ten years Anna works as a freelance-writer.
Käsikirja on monitaiteellinen tapahtuma, joka on suunnattu lapsille ja perheille. Projektin tavoitteena on pohtia, kuinka tärkeitä kädet ovat erilaisissa tilanteissa ja taiteen muodoissa. Yhdessä osallistujien kanssa luomme tarinoita, teemme käsitöitä, piirrämme ja tanssimme tutkiaksemme käsien monipuolista roolia taiteellisessa ilmaisussa, kommunikaatiossa ja arkipäivän elämässä. Pohdimme myös, miten vuorovaikutamme toistemme kanssa ja miten voimme hoitaa ja tukea toisiamme käsillämme.
Tapahtuma järjestetään Espoon kaupungin sekä Taiteen edistämiskeskuksen tuella.
Kielet: englanti, suomi, venäjä ja ukraina
Työryhmä: Anna Anisimova, lastenkirjailija; Anastasia Artemeva, visuaalinen ja yhteisötaiteilija; Tetiana Makhova, kuvataiteilija; Vera Lapitskaya, tanssitaiteilija