Jonna Kina and Aleksi Kraama from Finland are now at the Nordic guest studio participating in an exchange project with HIAP Helsinki International Artist Program.
Aleksi Kraama is an artist whose conceptual practice considers topological studies or better
put place-studies with a huge emphasis on time and durations. He primarily works with site-
specific projects with cinematic techniques as well as with incorporating sculptural elements.
Kraama’s moving image works often includes architecture as a tool for storytelling. In one of
his latest video works Parallel, the architecture of a controversial mining site in Finland is
literally mediated through a ruin of an old farmhouse raising the poetical next political.
Kraama’s works evoke kind of metaphysical character with quite documentary approaches.
Kraama’s artistic research draws towards both the diachronic and synchronic methods –
through and without time.
Aleksi Kraama (born 1983 in Tampere, Finland, previous name Aleksi Linnamaa) received an
MFA from the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts in the department of Time and Space. He have
studied photography in Bezalel University of Art and Design in Jerusalem. He received a BA
from Light and Sound Design from the Finnish Theater Academy. His work has been the
subject of several national and international exhibitions including Startpoint, Prize for
Emerging Artists; Dox, Center for Contemporary Art, Prague; City of Dreams, Mänttä Art
Festival XIX, Mänttä; and Expanded Photography, Gallery Forum Box, Helsinki. Kraama’s works
are in the collections of the Finnish State Art Collection among others. Recently Aleksi Kraama
participated to an artist-in-residency program in International Studio and Curatorial Program
(ISCP) in New York.
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Jonna Kina (b.1984) explores the relationship between language and image in her works. In her practice she combines photography, video, text and sound. Her project Foley Objects (2013), presents around 30 everyday objects each accompanied by a brief caption. The series involves a game of synaesthesia. Kina plays with viewers’ expectations and with the conceptual delimitations of the photographic medium. »Foley« means the reproduction of sound effects, which are added in postproduction to enhance the audio experience in films. The connection of the two, image and the text, is in a sense arbitrary and surreal but also strictly documentary in its approach. Kina recently published the book Foley Objects by Kehrer Verlag.
Graduating from the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts, Department of Time and Space Arts, Helsinki, 2013, Kina’s works have been presented in numerous group and solo exhibitions, most recently at the Gallery AMA, Helsinki (2016), Catherine Edelman Gallery, Chicago (2016), Museo Amparo, Puebla (2016), Kunsthalle, Helsinki (2016), Rooster Gallery, New York (2015), Musée de l’Elysée, Lausanne (2015), Finnish Museum of Photography (2015), Augusta Gallery, Helsinki (2015), Finnish Institute, Stockholm (2014) and Hasselblad Foundation, Gothenburg (2014). In 2013 she received a special mention from the jury of Photo Levallois Award. She was awarded a Source Cord Prize in 2014 and a Victor Fellowship Award in 2013. She is represented in the collections of Musée de l’Elysée (CH), The Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma (FI), Fundación RAC, Foundation of Contemporary Art (ES), The Collection of Finnish State Art Commission, Jenny & Antti Wihuri Foundation (FI), Finnish Museum of Photography, City of Levallois (FRA), Helsinki Art Museum and in the Finnish Art Association.
this residency project was made possible with the support of
