ARTISTS OF FIELDSTATION 2022

To see interviews with all artists click on the images.

Foto documentation by Tina Stridfeldt

Bio's:


Sigrid Espelien (b. 1984) is a process artist working with clay and ceramics. She is currently a PhD fellow in artistic research at the Art and Craft department at Oslo National Academy of Art. Espelien studied at the Glass and Ceramics School at Bornholm and received a MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan, USA. In the artistic research project “Grounding with (blue)clay” she explores connecting clay as more than a material for art production, but also as soil, landscape, earth, and land. She does this by reading clay through the body, the site and through technology.


Manuel Canu (b. 1979 in Italy) is a visual artist living and working in Copenhagen, Denmark, with a BA in 3D Ceramic Design from Bath Spa University, England. One of the focal points of his work is the presence of nature as a reference in architecture – for example in ornaments. Over the years, he has developed a practice where he uses techniques from drawing and sculpting in clay to explore architectural and sculptural aspects of space, form, gravity and materiality in site-specific installations constructed in unfired clay. The works are constructed in unfired clay and dry during the exhibition period. It creates a process where they shrink, crack and where they can even break. It is an aesthetic where the expression is in constant change. A driving force in Manuel Canu's work is the desire to create reflection on the impermanent and temporarity in the physical world.


Jennifer Forsberg, (b. 1970) living and working in the south of Sweden. Her work has been described as raw and direct, but also as poetic and multilayered. Her practice includes both large scale site specific public art commissions and studio work for exhibitions and galleries. She often works in a narrative way, where the physical behavior of the materials mix with well-known forms and attributes. Forsberg holds an MFA in ceramics from HDK at the University of Gothenburg.


Berenice Hernandez (b. 1982) works with sculptures, video, photography and performance. In her work she focuses on the importance of spaces, their foundations and the potential power they have over our society and the individual. Creating temporary and imaginary landscapes, to escape reality, to think about other possible futures. She was born in Mexico City where she started her ceramic training continuing to the Oslo National Academy of the Arts (KHiO) and graduated with a MFA from Konstfack, Stockholm 2022.


Aino Ojala (b. 1991) is a Helsinki-based visual artist and textile designer. She works with clay and textiles. In her artistic practice Ojala has an interest in themes of touch, contact , intimacy, and skin. To experience the world through crafts and the grounding interaction between the human body and material. She graduated from the Turku Arts Academy in 2018 and graduated with a MFA at Aalto University 2022.


SLAM: Annika Enqvist, Henny Linn Kjellberg, Karin Auran Frankenstein and Moa Lönn work collectively in artistic processes, curatorial projects and networks within the expanded field of contemporary art and crafts, which includes experimental ceramics. Their work reflects a relationship with the earthly matter, clay, which reflects stories of man's use of land, industry, craft, energy and spirituality.

In practice-based projects, collaborations, Fieldstations, residencies, open studios, films, seminars and exhibitions, S L A M provides new perspectives on contemporary art and craft, since 2017.

S L A M is currently arranging Fieldstation 2022 – a residency program and process based exhibition as open studios at Ifö Center Konsthall Lerlagret, in collaboration with Ifö Center, Bromölla. 

 

S L A M develops and builds networks and exchange of knowledge within the expanded field of contemporary art and crafts fields, as an art collective and a curatorial group . The focus is experimental site-specific work created in the meeting and the exchange of knowledge with the site and with peers in different contexts. The work as well as the networking is self-initiated, self-organized and artist driven. S L A M’s work springs from and interest in capturing, exploring and further develop the possibilities of expanded clay practices; in performances and collective actions, in up-scaling works, creating resonance in built structures, such as large-scale spatial installations, architecture and urban planning, and also in relation to ecological perspectives and its links to conceptual art, such as the Body Art and Land Art movement.


Hendrik Willekens is an artist working in the field of performance, of Belgian nationality and based in the city of Malmö, Sweden.  He is a trained actor and mime. During his education, Hendrik developed an interest for the function of music within performance, and for the last decade he has been working with exactly this. His works as a musical author and as an artistic collaborator have been shown throughout Europe, most notably in Kunstenfestivaldesarts (Brussels), Museo Reina Sofia (Madrid), Pact Zollverein (Essen), Moderna Museet (Stockholm), Short Theatre Festival (Rome), Palazzo Grassi (Venice), among others. His interest in music in performance lies in the possibility it opens to introduce a layer of abstraction into spaces of theatrical expectation. For Fieldstation, Willekens collaborates artistically with the group S L A M to create a soundscape of the environment and the material that communicates multiple dimensions of clay.


FIELDSTATION 2022 is organized on the initiative of S L A M as curators in collaboration with Ifö Center. It is supported by the Swedish Arts Grants Committée, the Swedish Arts Council , the Nordic Culture Fund, Region Skånes Utvecklingsstöd, Helge Ax:son Johnsons stiftelse, Nämnden för Hemslöjdsfrågor and Estrid Ericsons Stiftelse.