Frame Contemporary Art Finland is pleased to announce Inma Herrera, Anneli Holmstrom, Elina Juopperi, Joel Karppanen, Yassine Khaled, Ninni Korkalo, Anne Tompuri, and Arlene Tucker as the artists selected for the international Peer-to-Peer Programme.
The joint initiative, with eight other partner organisations, connects artists with art professionals across Europe.
“We received 138 extremely strong applications, and it was a pleasure gaining insight into the work of all who applied,” says Frame’s Programme Officer Dahlia El Broul.
The programme acts as a response to the needs declared by artists to dialogue with art professionals across disciplines and regions.
About the artists
Inma Herrera (1986, Madrid, Spain). Recently awarded the 2020 Ducat Prize, Herrera employs printmaking and experiments with the media, exploring its possibilities in relation to installation, video-performance, and sculpture. “I’m interested in printmaking as a language. I scrutinize and deconstruct its grammar because it allows me to immerse myself in a reflexive and analytical universe where I explore processes, materials, and the ritual dimension of physical labour, in defiance of the ‘relative dematerialisation’ of the body in the era of technology and virtuality. In this sense, materials and surfaces become a great go-between, which allows me to interact with the space that extends beyond my body.”
Anneli Holmstrom (1985, Edinburgh, Scotland). Holmstrom’s narrative approach strives for a visual language as fluid and remote as consciousness itself. “Through my practice, I intend to come to a better understanding of the relationship between storytelling as a means for anchoring the autobiographical. Via an expanded painting approach, I am particularly interested in the allegorical relationship between the pictorial space of paint and its relationship to psychological interiority. A returning interest for me is the divination qualities of painting—where the vein between artists’ brush and imagined space become gateways for channelling esoteric psychological worlds.”
Elina Juopperi (1975, Northern Finland & Paris, France). Juopperi pursues an interdisciplinary approach that combines different working methods such as photography, video production, text, object-based installations, and performative acts. By combining different works, she creates site-specific installations that—through strong spatial experiences—emphasise perception as an act of seeing. In doing so, traditional concepts of objectivity and materiality are confronted with the subjectivity of experience. “My works are a kind of mental landscapes in which untouched nature, symbols of cultural artefacts and technology are intertwined with global events.”
Joel Karppanen (1993, Northern Finland) is a documentary photographer and visual artist. Known for his socially and historically aware works, Karppanen concentrates on making personal, long-term photography series and essay films. “I want to consider how to produce art in a socially and ecologically sustainable way that matches my values. This is already reflected in my Nature Expeditions series: I didn’t want to subjugate nature to the camera, so I realised my work from existing representations. I will continue to explore similar possibilities of combining the legacy of postmodernism with posthumanism.”
Yassine Khaled (1988, Sefrou, Morocco). Khaled’s sculptures, installations, performances, paintings and videos focus on digital communication, freedom of movement and power relations in our globalised world. Khaled aims to visualise virtual communication and the conditions that determine one’s level of comfort and stability in society. He was born in Morocco and received his artistic training in both Morocco and Finland. This geographic and cultural shift has had an evident impact on his works. One of Khaled’s current projects, Sense of Belonging, combines research between Culture, Technology, and Politics—challenging us to explore conceptions of belongingness within human nature by creating a hybrid between two senses, sight and sound.”
Ninni Korkalo (1982, Helsinki, Finland). Korkalo is a visual artist working with moving images—often dealing with social themes such as hate speech, hospitality, culture, and interculturality. Korkalo’s work rests on a curiosity for humanity and the possibility for art to suggest and research ways to be merciful towards oneself and others. “The themes of my works are social but strive to touch the individual. I choose a limited or, so-called, “micro-level” subject, or story, related to a larger phenomenon.” Her current film, The Best Lover, is about the practice of loving as a driving force for social change.
Anne Tompuri (1958, Lappeenranta, Finland). Tompuri is best known for her black and white canvases in gouache and pigment. The works in The Window series are a juxtapositioning of two elements; black and white, light and dark, the material and the spiritual. The works, concerned with life’s most fundamental questions, inhabit a border territory between two worlds. Tompuri herself says that she is speaking for life and hope. Tompuri’s works communicate a tremendous depth of feeling, and, indeed, the artist herself wishes for them to be experienced on an emotional level.
Arlene Tucker (1980, Taipei, Taiwan, Delaware, USA, & Brussels, Belgium). Tucker’s socially engaged work utilises Translation Studies, Semiotics, and Feminist Practices. “As an artist, educator, and diversity agent, I realise my art through installation and dialogical practices. Always a co-creation with the public, my work allows us to share perspectives about identity and belonging through different mediums and approaches such as memories, hair, and letter writing. My work (i.e. Story Data, Free Translation, Knots) brings people together worldwide through a process-based artistic practice and makes all voices heard.” Tucker has been based in Finland since 2011.
About the programme
The Peer-to-Peer programme is co-organised by the: Danish Art Foundation, Estonian Centre for Contemporary Art, Flanders Arts Institute, Frame Contemporary Art Finland, IASPIS – The Swedish Arts Grants Committee’s International Programme for Visual and Applied Art, Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art, Mondriaan Fund (the Netherlands), Office for Contemporary Art Norway, and Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia.
Each organisation will host eight artists for the programme, 72 artists in total.