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You are warmly welcome to the fabricbook making and sketching workshop. This project invites the audience to experiment with using textiles to record our immediate environment. The process of mark-making with thread and fabric is such that it cannot be erased, cannot be turned into whole again, but can be repaired and mended. Its tactile quality is becoming obsolete and almost scandalous in the times of covid19 pandemic, yet the fabrics and other materials that the books are made from allow for them to be washed and ironed.
In this workshop we will focus on the area around Helsinki prison. We will first gather in Mad House and spend about one hour becoming familiar with the process of sketching using needle and thread, and making our own sketchbooks. Then we will set off on a walkabout trip around Helsinki prison. We will stop at a couple of spots, including the former prison garden, the prison gates and the park Violanpuisto. There we will make images of the prison and its neighbourhood, as well as put down on “paper” (fabric) the thoughts that arise while engaging with this area. We will discuss the thoughts and ideas and techniques as we work.
The participants are welcome to take their books with them. This workshop is suitable for people of all ages, beginners as well as advanced textile practitioners. It will require some movement and non-intensive walking.
Anastasia Artemeva is a visual and socially-engaged artist and researcher based in Helsinki. My practice is focused on spaces: how we inhabit spaces, how we co-exist in the same space, even when our perceptions and experiences are different, how spaces and their histories affect us and how we affect them. I make sculptural, spatial installations in art and non/art spaces, often together with or based on communication with people of different walks of life. The social and physical isolation we face currently further references the ongoing subject of my research and practice of the past eight years - imprisonment. Textile industry is a huge player in the economics and politics of prison labor and the idea of sewing as an artistic practice or a hobby versus forced labor is a challenging and fascinating one for me.
Artemeva studied Fashion Design and Sculpture & Combined media in Limerick School of Art and Design (Ireland) until 2012, and Environmental art in Aalto University. Artemeva has written for the Visual Artist’s News Sheet, Paper Visual Art and IMAGE InSEA: International Society for Education through Art magazine.
https://anastasia-artemeva.com/