Past Residents

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Brazil, Finland

Past Resident
2023: Uniarts Helsinki's Academy of Fine Arts and Saastamoinen Foundation

Artist

Felipe de Ávila Franco

Felipe de Ávila Franco investigates materiality through the lens of environmental aesthetics, creating sculptures, multimedia installations, and electromechanical systems, among other things. By combining traditional and experimental sculpture techniques, the artist explores the boundaries between different mediums.

Felipe de Ávila Franco has exhibited work at Helsinki Art Museum; Kiasma Contemporary Museum; and Amos Rex Museum, all in Helsinki, among others.

Events & Exhibitions

2023 Spring Open Studios
April 21–April 22, 2023
The work operates through an automated electro-mechanic system that alludes to the astronomic event that inspired the title of the work, through the contrast of light and recycled lubricant oil. The work integrates the collection of the Contemporary Art Museum Kiasma.
Felipe de Ávila Franco, Eclipse, 2017-2020, wood, light bulb, oil, and electromechanics, 2413/16 × 2413/16 × 85/8 in. (62.99 × 62.99 × 21.84 cm).
The work consists of four see-through travel suitcases with heart-shaped elements resting inside. The hearts are made of terracotta and porcelain combined with contaminated soil material collected from different sites of Finland and Brazil where mining industry activities has been reported as responsible for environmental contamination.
Felipe de Ávila Franco, Displacements, 2021, porcelain, terracota, contaminated residue from mining site and PVC, dimensions variable.
Felipe de Ávila Franco, Provoked Archaeologies, 2019, excavated soil in the Amazonia rainforest, branches, and sisal rope, dimensions variable.
Felipe de Ávila Franco, Favela Offshore #2, 2021, video, 10 min.
Felipe de Ávila Franco, Reflexive Landscapes, 2021, UV print on Neobond, wood, frame and forest ashes, 45,6 × 90,5 in. (45,6 × 90,5 cm).

Residents from Finland

Laura Lappi

Finland, United States
Alfred Kordelin Foundation
2025

Kaija Hinkula

Finland
Uniarts Helsinki's Academy of Fine Arts and Saastamoinen Foundation
2025

Hans Rosenström

Finland
Uniarts Helsinki's Academy of Fine Arts and Saastamoinen Foundation
2024
United States

Past Resident
2023: Celebrate the Studio

Artist

Andrew Ross

Andrew Ross is a sculptor and new media artist. His works ranges from process-based abstractions to figurative tableaus, combining idiosyncrasy, reverse engineering, and digital imaging to create narrative fragments. He uses everyday objects, popular culture, mythology, and online communities to create speculative fiction inspired by diasporic thought and explore the relationship between the arbitrary and the designed.

Andrew Ross has exhibited work at Clima, Milan; False Flag, New York; and American Medium, New York, among others.

Escher once asked, “Are you really sure that a floor can’t also be a ceiling?” The Dutch artist might have ignored the fundamentals of gravity, but Andrew Ross takes them head on, laying out a narrative where gravity is a character as real as the mole or ant. Ross’s exhibition—with its creatures, exotic garden, and reclining man admiring an apple —distorts what could otherwise be seen as a kind of pastoral. Using the language of display (plinths, pedestals, trusses), Ross teases out the purgatory between what we experience and what we know: the heavens, the earth, and the scafolding that connects them. The many faces of astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson found in Ross’s flowers One suspects Tyson would admire the way that Ross’s universe, situated in the double helix of fact and ction, gives body to the forces we usually take for granted. His Untitled (Figure), a nod to the Newtonian myth, locates us in a moment of wonder when daydreams collide with reality. The ceiling and floor collapse and leave us with a divine sense of self- awareness. In the words of Tyson: “We are part of this Universe, we are in this Universe, but perhaps more important than both of those facts is that the Universe is in us.” — Kat Herriman, Artforum Critic's Pick
Andrew Ross, Untitled (Landowner), 2017, wood, plastic, plaster, pigment, plastic, acrylic, fabric, tubing, bamboo, string and planter, 95 × 85 × 61 in. (241.3 × 215.9 × 154.94 cm).
Chassis, is the word for the base structure of a car, onto which all the other parts attach. It also sounds a bit like a person’s name. The desires latent in the anthropomorphism of this sound associated with what’s “under the hood” are exposed by the fanaticism accompanying car parts, extending into toy and model versions. DIY vacuum forming is in a sense a political act, to take a technique used by mass production and to do it in your home and to uniquely customize your plastic shells. It’s a hobby associated with toy cars and cosplay, and other avenues where plastic bodies are interchangeable to their chassis. The show is comprised of plastic parts that interconnect to create hollow objects bordering on figurative, abstract and functional.
Andrew Ross, Chassis, 2017, vacuum formed thermoplastic, light bulbs, electrical wire, aluminum and wood, dimensions variable..
A sculpture using real riot gear and a steel wool figure that does not anatomically align with the riot gear.
Andrew Ross, Hollow Man With Rubber Boots, 2017, riot gear, resin, fiberglass, steel, vinyl, wire mesh and steel wool, dimensions variable..
The work was originally sculpted out of air dry clay over a plaster and wire armature and base. The top half was then re-cast as a hollow shell in fiberglass and resin. The bottom half was left as the original material. The final material list is resin, fiberglass, clay, plastic, plaster, lacquer, paint, steel and aluminum armature. My intention was to make figurative sculptures which also served as architectural spaces for miniature figures. So the work focused on armor and shell like shapes. All Cartoons was intended to feel like a pile of costume materials that became animated into a figure of its own. The bottom half is sculpted to resemble the tread on the boots that I was wearing as I made it, and the top half was sculpted with a breast plate and helmet in mind.
Andrew Ross, All Cartoons Are Masculine, 2017, unfired water-based clay, resin, fiberglass, primer, plastic and plaster, 45 × 56 × 54 in. (114.3 × 142.24 × 137.16 cm).
Andrew Ross takes a cinema-inspired approach to sculpture. He’s interested in the dissonance created by the simultaneous events of depiction and reception. Ross sculpts in the round a zany cartoon character, which resembles Bugs Bunny. The sculpture casts the character as a archetypal underdog akin to classical depictions of David. Rather than holding a stone or slingshot, the cartoon rabbit figure rolls up its skin like a sleeve, apparently in preparation for a fight or to tackle a dirty task. The task at hand being absent, sets its gaze or the direction of the arms toward the viewers’ space. The sculpture gazes through the viewer allowing for symbolic confrontation, or perhaps anticipation to be placed in front of an appropriate adversary by its curators. Ross embraces the potential for both direction and misdirection given by this frozen moment of tension, and the emotive embodiment allowed by the animated figure- emphasized by the arm’s physical contortion.
Andrew Ross, Fight Loop, 2021, 3D printed thermoplastic, epoxy coating, polyeurothane, aluminum, stainless steel, plywood and automotive paint, 36 × 62 × 36 in. (91.44 × 157.48 × 91.44 cm).

Residents from United States

Ruth Owens

United States
Sherrill Collection of American Art Foundation
Studio #213

Umber Majeed

United States
Pollock-Krasner Foundation
Studio #204

Grace Rosario Perkins

United States
Leon Polk Smith Foundation
Studio #303
Norway, Slovakia, Spain

Past Resident
2022: Oslo Kommune Internasjonalt

Artist

Martinka Bobrikova & Oscar de Carmen

Martinka Bobrikova and Oscar de Carmen have been an artist duo since 2005. Throughout their artistic careers, they have taken on a wide range of roles, including those of artists, cultural operators, curators, and educators. Art and creativity are used by the duo to activate cultural dynamics that facilitate and/or combine education, communication, and urban and social transformation processes, both inside and outside of galleries, and beyond the framework of institutional dialogue.

Martinka Bobrikova and Oscar de Carmen have exhibited work at ‘Refuge’ Lagos Biennial, Nigeria; ‘Envisioning the Future!’ Saitama Triennale, Japan; and ‘The Will’ Tbilisi International Triennial, Georgia, among others.

Gathering in front of parlament of Oslo, as protest, assembly, practicing collective nap.
Martinka Bobrikova & Oscar de Carmen, The Migrant Assembly, 2021, public gathering in front of the parlament of Oslo, dimensions variable. Photo by Jacky Jaan-Yuan Kuo.
people dining, and having conversation at an imperial table
Martinka Bobrikova & Oscar de Carmen, Kitchen Dialogues, 2014, performance, dimensions variable. Photo by Magnus Trevisan.
wooden construction tight with red Ratchet Straps with S-Hooks
Martinka Bobrikova & Oscar de Carmen, dysfunctional deconstructions, 2020, installation, dimensions variable. Photo by Erik Sæter Jørgensen.
5m long concrete columns broken in pieces displayed felling apart in the space
Martinka Bobrikova & Oscar de Carmen, LIVING IN THE BEGINNING OF TIMES, 2017, installation, dimensions variable.
wall drawing, white choke on blackboard, football as metafora of art world
Martinka Bobrikova & Oscar de Carmen, In the midst of worlds, 2022, wall drawing, 13 × 88 in. (33.02 × 223.52 cm).

Residents from Slovakia

Tamara Kametani

Slovakia, Greece, United Kingdom
International Visegrad Fund
Studio #301

Adrián Kriška

Slovakia, Czech Republic
International Visegrad Fund
2024

Gregor Petrikovic

United Kingdom, Slovakia
International Visegrad Fund
2023