Welcome to the Winter edition of the HIAP Open Studios!

Download programme and event info here!

The event offers the unique opportunity to meet up with the resident artists and curators, and get a glimpse of the work that they have been developing during their residency. The HIAP Open Studios event takes place in the second half of each residency season, in March, May, and October.

This year’s Open Studios will also showcase work-in-progress from Ukrainian artists who are residents of the Ukrainian Solidarity Residencies Programme network. The current partners of the programme are AARK, Art Centre Salmela, Connecting Points programme, Fairres, Goethe-Institut Finnland, HIAP – Helsinki International Artist Programme, Loviisa Art Support Association, Nelimarkka Museum, Pro Artibus, The Finnish Artists’ Studio Foundation, The Finnish Illustration Association Kuvittajat, and Värtsilä Artist Residency. In 2023, the programme is supported by Kone Foundation and Nordic Culture Point.

Participating HIAP residents
Madeleine Andersson (SWE)
Anna Broms (FIN)
Juliet Ellis (US/UK)
Yi Ting Hsu (TWN)
Soko Hwang (KOR)
Flis Holland (FIN/UK)
Daniel Malpica (MEX/FIN)
Sara Rönnbäck (SWE/NOR)
Helen Svoboda (FIN/AUS)

Participating Ukraine Solidarity Residencies Programme residents
Maria Budnikova (UKR)
Vlada Kupriyanova (UKR)
Oksana Mykhanko (UKR)
Sergii Shaulis (UKR)

 

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PROGRAMME

FRI 24 MAR 17:00–21:00
SAT 25 MAR 14:00–18:00

+ 18:30–20:00 post-event concert at Linna Bar

Besides the ongoing presentations of the residents’ work-in-progress, the programme features also live events.

LIVE EVENTS

FRIDAY 24 MARCH
(we recommend taking the 16:40 ferry)

• • • • 17:30 reading by Sara Rönnbäck, HIAP Studios, 20

      • 18:30 performance by Yi Ting Hsu, HIAP Studios, 30´

      • 19:30 performance by Maria Budnikova, HIAP Gallery Augusta, 10´

SATURDAY 25 MARCH
(we recommend taking the 13:40 ferry)

• • • • 14:30 performance lecture by Madeleine Andersson, HIAP Project Space, 50´

      • 15:50 performance by Soko Hwang, HIAP Gallery Augusta, 25´

      • 17:00 performance by Yi Ting Hsu, HIAP Studios, 30´

      • 18:30 post-event concert: Classical Opera and piano compositions by Maria Budnikova and Vlada Kupriyanova, Linna Bar, 90´

    • ON VIEW AT THE HIAP GALLERY AUGUSTA
      Works-in-progress by Flis Holland, Daniel Malpica and Ukraine Solidarity Residencies Programme resident artists Maria Budnikova, Vlada Kupriyanova, Oksana Mykhanko, Sergii Shaulis

    • ON VIEW IN THE HIAP STUDIOS
      Works-in-progress by Anna Broms, Juliet Ellis, Yi Ting Hsu, Sara Rönnbäck, Helen Svoboda

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GALLERY AUGUSTA

• • • FLIS HOLLAND
      trans futures

“the thing you just announced you know that kind of seeing that little bump there in uh in the image of that new kind of celestial body we knew was there but now we’ve uh had it on the camera it’s just uh just a step in that direction I’m very optimistic that’s awesome what the team has planned for months years ago is coming to fruition”
Live stream of NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test, 27.9.2022 09′49″

“What you see isn’t always what you get.”
Jesse Darling keynote, “Art, Gender & Disability: Aesthetics of Access”, TFAP@CAA 18.2.2023

 

• • • SOKO HWANG
      mobility, conflict, order, resistance, power relations

Earth is a performance that engages in the conflicting desires between chaos and order. It delves into transforming landscapes by weaving fragmental myths and realities, boundaries between animals and humans, savagery and civilization.

Concept, Dramaturgy, and Direction: Soko Hwang
Performance: Soko Hwang, Leon Friedrich Thomas
Sound Design and Musical Performance: Linda Lazarov, Pedro MacLoughlin
Light Design and Technical Direction: Mikko Kaukonen
Mask Design: Julia Trofimova

Live performance at HIAP Gallery Augusta (duration: 25´)
Sat 25.3. at 15:50
Language: English
Content note: The performance includes loud voices and strobe lights.

 

• • • DANIEL MALPICA
      multimedia, poetry, narratives, internet memes, literature

Malpica will be showcasing a series of audio-visual experiments created using Instagram as a video editor. He attempts to explore the creative potential of this form of media by using Instagram’s editing tools to experiment with different visual and narrative techniques. Each video is a self-contained work, but when viewed collectively, the result becomes a tapestry that reflects a very particular segment of culture and information from our online world.

In 2012, the personal image of Malpica went viral as an internet meme for users to mock or satirize left-wing political views, particularly in Mexico and other Spanish-speaking countries. As a result of that, Malpica was subjected to internet harassment, death threats and media coverage. The meme with his image has become a cultural phenomenon, representing a unique intersection of politics and internet culture in Mexico and beyond.

The video paintings presented at the HIAP Open Studios event are part of a longer series of research and experiments around the free usage and manipulation of information online.

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GALLERY AUGUSTA – UKRAINE SOLIDARITY RESIDENCIES PROGRAMME

This year’s Open Studios will also showcase work-in-progress from Ukrainian artists who are residents of the Ukraine Solidarity Residencies Programme network.
The current partners of the programme are AARK, Art Centre Salmela, Connecting Points programme, Fairres, Goethe-Institut Finnland, HIAP – Helsinki International Artist Programme, Loviisa Art Support Association, Nelimarkka Museum, Pro Artibus, The Finnish Artists’ Studio Foundation, The Finnish Illustration Association Kuvittajat, and Värtsilä Artist Residency.
In 2023, the programme is supported by Kone Foundation and Nordic Culture Point.

• • • MARIA BUDNIKOVA
      The Heavenly Swings

This installation is dedicated to all deceased Ukrainian children in the ongoing war. On the children’s swings can be seen names of some of these children written on attached ribbons.

I am working on an album which is about my experience with war and a hope for peace and it is also about love, of course. I am collecting materials for my ongoing series of drawings and paintings called The Anatomy of a Dead Tree. My recent project reflects the state of solitude. I depict found pieces of dead trees from different places I have traveled and install them along with objects that I have personal connection to. The placement of the objects emphasizes their inconvenient presence in the chosen space, the personal emotional separation within the external rupture. In my drawings the landscape of the city exists under the flower spread, decorative elements of baroque architecture, faceted glasses filled with liquid. The city as a metaphor for one’s home, nevertheless referencing a home-town, depicted through conventional forms.

Maria Budnikova is currently in-residence at Nelimarkka Museum for the period 1.1.–31.3.2023. Budnikova’s residency is realised in the context of the Ukraine Solidarity Residencies programme.

Live performance at HIAP Gallery Augusta (duration: 10´)
Fri 24.3. at 19:30
Traditional Ukrainian lullaby Kotiku sirenki, Language: Ukrainian

Live concert at Linna Bar (duration: 90´)
Sat 25.3. at 18:30
Classical Opera and piano compositions by Maria Budnikova and Vlada Kupriyanova

 

• • • VLADA KUPRIYANOVA
      freedom, cinematic orchestra, piano, collaboration, Ukrainian artist

De Libertate, 4 minutes, 2023
Music by Vladа Kupriyanovа, video by Maria Leonova.

“What is freedom? What good is it?” – Ukrainian philosopher G. Skovoroda

A reflection on the notion of human freedom as a path. You may be calm and still, but the world is moving rapidly, offering new circumstances, rules, conditions and roles. To understand who you are and where you belong in this rapid movement. To choose a direction and come to the right place. Although it will only be a temporary shelter. As an outsider, we can observe the journey of others. Often all we can see is stillness and calm.

​​De Libertate was conceived as a cycle of pieces for cinematic orchestras. The primary source of the idea is a poem of the same name by the Ukrainian philosopher G. Skovoroda, in which he describes freedom as the highest and most unconditional value. For me, as a composer, the creation of this cycle is important because the category of freedom is very expansive. In addition to inspiration, we can hear in it sounds of protest, fatigue, and even hopelessness. I imagine freedom as a way in which we hear very different kinds of music. The track was recorded in the Fairres AiR work studio in Porvoo and released in collaboration with the Ukrainian artist Maria Leonova, who collaborated with the video artwork.

Vlada Kupriyanova is currently in-residence at Fairres for the period 1.9.2022–31.3.2023. Kupriyanova’s residency is realised in the context of the Ukraine Solidarity Residencies programme.

Live concert at Linna Bar (duration: 90´)
Sat 25.3. at 18:30
Classical Opera and piano compositions by Maria Budnikova and Vlada Kupriyanova

 

• • • OKSANA MYKHANKO
      Untitled

Fabric poster depicting darkness trying to absorb life and light

There is a separate art form – icons embroidered using fish bones by prisoners in concentration camps.  It’s a way to pray or say something without using words. It’s a symbol of resistance.
This work is my way to say everything I want to say without words.  A way to support, and an opportunity to pay tribute to the people who are fighting.

Oksana Mykhanko is currently in-residence at the Finnish Artists’ Studio Foundation for the period 1.1.–31.3.2023. Mykhanko’s residency is realised in the context of the Ukraine Solidarity Residencies programme.

 

• • • SERGII SHAULIS
      sculpture, 3D, AR, war, VR, steel, concrete, Ukraine, Kharkiv

Ferroconcrete

Ferroconcrete is a series of works about those who defend Ukraine at the cost of their lives. It is about soldiers, volunteers, and ordinary people who bravely stand up for freedom and democracy. It is also about destruction, resilience, and resistance; character building and unification of Ukrainian people.

I work with the materials at hand, in a way to try to process my feelings and rethink my working method prior to the war. Because of the war, I lack the opportunity to continue working in the ways I used to, I have started doing more digital and 3D sculptures, which has resulted in this series. It begins with the city where I was born, where I lived. It is about Kharkiv – a multifaceted city, a city of strong people. A city russia has been trying to wipe off the face of the earth from the very first day of full-scale invasion.

The series begins with expressive sketches. Gradually, transforming into something resembling a human skeleton, an invisible frame that holds everything together. Just as in architecture: there are internal structures that support the whole outer shelf. The war has exposed these frames; rocket explosions have opened up the inner structures – now for all to see.

Sergii Shaulis is currently in-residence at Värtsilä Artist Residency for the period 1.1.–30.6.2023. Shaulis’ residency is realised in the context of the Ukraine Solidarity Residencies programme.

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HIAP PROJECT SPACE

• • • MADELEINE ANDERSSON
      Petrosexuality – a performance lecture on power, sex and fossil fuels

To tackle fossil fuel combustion in the 2100th century can seem somewhat unfashionable. Our current energy system is undergoing a green transition which makes fossil fuels less and less important for each day. But scholars like Dominic Boyer, Cara New Daggett and Andreas Malm claim that fossil fuel dependency is much deeper intertwined into western society than through a mere contingency of pyromania. It rather emerges as a fundamental structure for western cultures, capitalist structures, societal identification and private perception.

The lecture will expand on this thinking.

Performance lecture at the HIAP Project Space (duration: 50´)
Sat 25.3. at 14:30
Language: English

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HIAP STUDIOS

• • • ANNA BROMS
      Energy, flux, time, transferring, skin-like properties

Embrasures
In the eastern end of the HIAP Studio Building, up on the brick wall, there are seven deep embrasures. Cotton batiste, with a certain early morning sky colour painted on it, will descend along the wall from her studio upstairs. With time, with rough conditions, the works will gain skin-like properties. The sound of the work will be collected and transferred to a fragile sculpture. Some works from Broms’ recent exhibition at Oksasenkatu11 will be present as well.

 

• • • JULIET ELLIS
      performance, installation, experimental film, reconstructing images creating semi-abstract tableaus, using photography as a medium of investigating emptiness of the self and object, appearance and disappearance. autobiography as practice, the use of documents/diarist approach to practice 

Using photography and film, Juliet has been working through the idea of emptiness, more specifically the emptiness of self, that we are merely imputed by conceptual thought like everything else.

For the HIAP Open Studios, Juliet invites you to find yourself. If that self or me exists from its own side, as solid and real as it appears, it should be findable — and the more we look for it the clearer it should become. We should be able to take away everything that is not Me and be left with Me. If we dissolve away our sense of self,  what would that change? What could the possibilities be?

 

• • • YI TING HSU
      site-specific performance, abstract painting, liminal space, perception scape, surveillance, female body, boundary, alienation, system, intervention

During her residency Hsu has been working mainly with performance and painting. In her studio, she presents various parts of her practice; a live performance, documents, sketches, painting and video, including part of her new ongoing site-specific performance project Find Shelter taking place in the ferry passenger pavilion on the Market Square in Helsinki. The project touches upon intervention and the rebuilding of the journey to Suomenlinna. The Floating Body performance series, which started in 2014, focuses on the notion of liminal space. The abstract paintings from the Body Scape series started in 2022, and were inspired by landscapes and soundscapes in different European cities.

Live performance at the HIAP Studios
Fri 24.3. ongoing for 30´ starting from 18:30
Sat 25.3. ongoing for 30´ starting from 17:00

 

• • • SARA RÖNNBÄCK
      sculpture, installation, text, poetry, materiality, choreographic working method

During the time on Suomenlinna, I have worked with materials I found here, physical as well as immaterial. In traveling to the island, I brought with me a limited set of materials and my past experiences. I have sculpturally worked with the meeting of these materials and along with text weaved together poetry about divisions, categorization and splits – as both a violent and tender act – opposites are often closest to each other, overlapping and intertwining – what is in the borderland?

During open studio I will also read some texts from my recently translated and printed book “A bird Whispered in my Ear, or; Extraordinary everyday poems, or; Värmland is part of the world”. The book will be available for purchase during the event. Preferred payment methods: cash or MobilePay. All proceeds go directly to the artist.

Reading at the HIAP Studios (duration 20´)
Fri 24.3. at 17:30
Language: English

 

• • • HELEN SVOBODA
      listening, double bass, voice, sound painting, extended technique, songs

Helen Svoboda challenges the sonic expectations of the double bass, delving into unexpected sound worlds on the instrument with incorporation of extended technique. Her work explores the combination of overtones with voice exploring themes of sonic unity, employed across abstract song-writing forms. Devoid of genre, her practice is led by curiosity, culminating in a series of short ponderings and scattered sound paintings inspired by the Finnish biosphere.

This event invites a non-formal engagement with listening. It is not a concert, but an open invitation to join in the resonance of the Johan Tobias Studio at any given moment. Pens and crayons will be supplied for those who wish to translate their listening experience onto paper.

Guest vocalist Selma Savolainen will feature for part of the experience.

 

Free entrance. We are looking forward to welcoming you!

Note: Parts of the event will be photo-documented. The images will be used by HIAP for communication purposes.

 

• How to get to Suomenlinna

Take the HSL ferry that leaves from the Market Square (Kauppatori). Ferry timetable here

• Accessibility

Accessing the HIAP studios, office, Gallery Augusta & Project Space by wheelchair is possible but we recommend to be accompanied by a person assisting because the entrance doors are not step-free. The HIAP toilets are not wheelchair-accessible but you can find accessible toilets on five different locations on the island indicated on this map. The closest one to the HIAP Studios is located in the Summer Theatre (building nr 36 on the Suomenlinna visitors’ map).

If you prefer to follow a more accessible route towards the HIAP premises, please check the map indicating more accessible routes on the island here. The map is also available at the Tourist Information Desk in the Jetty Barracks (building nr 2 on the visitors’ map). Please note that no signposts designate the accessible route in the terrain.

We are happy to help you plan your visit. Please contact us for additional information!