Past Residents
Tuomas A. Laitinen
Tuomas A. Laitinen is an artist whose work fuses moving image, 3D animation, light, sound, installations and spatial interventions. His artworks are loaded with references ranging from ancient tragedies to philosophy to speculative fiction to experimental music to architectural history to contemporary media culture. More recently, Laitinen has conducted in-depth research on the global circulation of raw materials, namely copper, to address the micro and macro processes and concerns that inform contemporary reality. Laitinen’s art exposes the connections and negotiates between private and public, and poetic and political.
Tuomas A. Laitinen graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts, Helsinki in 2008. Laitinen has participated in exhibitions and festivals throughout the world including the Bucharest Biennale; Platform Garanti Contemporary Art Center, Istanbul; SADE LA Gallery, Los Angeles; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Shanghai; Moving Image New York 2016; Mildura Palimpsest Biennale, Australia, 2015; and the 5th Cairo Video Festival, 2013. His recent major solo exhibition Fundamental Matter was held at EMMA – Espoo Museum of Modern Art, Finland in 2014-2015. In 2013, Laitinen was awarded the first Fine Arts Academy of Finland’s award for emerging Finnish artists.
Events & Exhibitions
Fall Open Studios 2016
November 4–November 5, 2016
Residents from Finland
Past Resident2016: Estonian Contemporary Art Development Center
Rael Artel
Rael Artel has worked as a contemporary art curator since 2000. Her curatorial practice is context sensitive, relating to topical issues of contemporary society such as transformation, identity politics and growing nationalism in former Eastern Europe. Artel has been director of the Tartu Art Museum, Estonia since 2014. Her main focus as director is to question the practice and structure of the museum and reposition the institution in the local art scene through its programmatic activities.
Rael Artel (born 1980) received her initial training in art history from the Estonian Academy of Arts, Tallinn (1998—2003) and curatorial training from de Appel Art Centre, Amsterdam (2004—2005). Artel initiated the Public Preparation series, a platform for discussion on practices of contemporary art in Tallinn. She has curated over 60 exhibitions in Estonia and abroad, always with special focus on art in Eastern Europe. From 2010-2014 she was the artistic director of ART IST KUKU NU UT festival of contemporary art.