Inari Sandell is the FIDA Artist in Residence 2022
Inari Sandell, “Gravity Blanket”, 2021. Photo by Inari Sandell.
It is with great pleasure that we welcome visual artist Inari Sandell this August as the FIDA Artist in Residence 2022. Inari Sandell (b. 1991) is based in Helsinki and works with installation, textile, and sculptural objects with a background in photography.
About the choice of Inari Sandell, the FIDA Selection Committee mentions:
“In their practice, Sandell moves away from the original photographic starting point and is heading in a more spatial as well as painterly direction. With works like Gravity Blanket from 2021, Sandell shows great potential. The work mimics a weight blanket but is transparent, and the filling, which would conventionally be cherry stone or glass beads, is replaced by shattered glass. In addition to the work’s aesthetic qualities, it contains an elegant narrative about neurodivergent coping – about existing in the world with a sensory apparatus that is not neurotypical. This is how Sandell uses their autism diagnosis as a competence, where the sensory intensity with which they experience the world is conveyed in the works. Inari Sandell’s practice appears innovative, confident, and exploratory. As such, a residency in a new context and with FIDA’s resources and network will be conducive to the artist’s career and further opportunities.”
The FIDA residency program was established in 2019 as a collaboration between the Finnish Cultural Institute in Denmark and FABRIKKEN for Kunst og Design. Sandell is the fourth artist to be selected for the two-month program in Copenhagen.
The purpose of the FIDA program is to build strong networks between the Finnish and Danish art scene, and to introduce a Finnish artist to a Danish art market. In addition to a private studio space at FABRIKKEN, Inari Sandell can look forward to participating in network-building activities locally and across the country, which not only strengthens the artist’s network in Denmark, but also gives the Danish art scene new impulses as well as the opportunity to establish lasting connections to the Finnish art scene, when Sandell’s residency begins in August.
FIDA is funded by the Finnish Cultural Institute in Denmark, which offers Finnish know-how and facilitates cultural exchange in contemporary and performing arts, with the aim of developing and strengthening the dialogue between professional artists and institutions from Finland and Denmark and to the general public.