Past Residents

Past Resident
2026: IASPIS - The Swedish Arts Grants Committee's International Programme for Visual Artists

Artist

Mats Hjelm

Mats Hjelm is a Stockholm-based artist working with large-scale video installations, documentary film, and public multimedia artworks. His practice explores the intersection of art, social justice, and personal and political narratives, moving fluidly between video installation and documentary traditions. He has worked extensively in Europe, West Africa, South Africa, North Africa, the United States, Brazil, and India. Hjelm also teaches specialized courses in contemporary art and is an experienced cinematographer, colorist, programmer, and video installation specialist.

Mats Hjelm has exhibited work at Museu de Arte Moderna (MAM), Rio de Janeiro; Walker Art Center, Minnesota; and Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris, among others.

In the monumental four-channel film installation, music is the starting point. The film takes us through a series of panoramic sequences of landscapes accompanied by Johann Sebastian Bach’s 1st and 2nd cello suites, in a new interpretation by South African classical guitarist Derek Gripper. It is as if the film follows the music, rather than vice-versa. In addition, a tanpura drone and a long-necked fretless lute, common in Indian classical music, are barely audible in the background. The show also features a series of glass sculptures with light animations and a filmic object adding to a multidimensional experience.

Mats Hjelm, Memories of Lakes Lost, 2024, 4-channel video installation , 29 min.

The Other Shore posits a poetic reflection about the Atlantic as a space of transit between the different shores of this ocean that link histories of diaspora, colonization, and the mystery of liberation by navigating to an “other” place, as well as the horrors of captivity awaiting those who are shipped against their will and the voyage back to their homeland. Hjelm’s multimedia syntax, produced by the edited correlation of images, texts, music, and song – media often separated in purist, autonomous notions of language inherited from modernism – comes together in a hybridized whole, like a poetic equivalent of our polarized daily lives. As a result, The Other Shore has a powerful semantic and narrative drive that makes it overflow from the internal structure of linguistic systems to the outside world, with which it poetically connects. This outflowing does not, however, result from a linear edition of sounds and images succeeding one another in a given sequence. There are four simultaneous projections, two by two, on the front and back of the screen, which show on one side audio and visual records of literary and musical works – people and landscapes – recorded on the shores of the Atlantic, combined in flows that do not always fit together logically. On the other side of the screen, projections of watery images evoke the fluid waterway formed by the shores that delimit the Atlantic like a gigantic ocean web that still enables the mass geographic circulation of human beings. A history that cannot be fathomed in the sphere of discourse, but which can be experienced here on a poetic plane.”

Mats Hjelm, The Other Shore, 2019, 4-channel video installation, 37 min.

Amidst his fragmented landscapes, Mats Hjelm beckons us to join him on his journeys to contemplate the intricate experiences of others and the complexities of understanding the world. As time flows through moving images on the screen, we may be reminded of the moments that have passed and that will not return. “When today becomes yesterday, and tomorrow becomes eternity” as an oracle’s voice narrated in the film, Hjelm reflects and thinks through his lens to capture unconventional images from different places. The richness of his images intensifies as they accumulate to build scenes that evoke collages and create narratives, in an attempt to predict the future through the past – that moment when time blurs and all is seen simultaneously. The work takes the audience on a poetic and melancholic journey through a range of captivating images without revealing the identity of the places that make up one world. The images in this four-channel video flow as a dystopian futuristic piece, their rich intensity unwavering. The Nigerian musician Tony Allen’s laid-back voice sings ‘Don’t take the boat’ warning all who seek to cross the ocean in this perilous voyage, to reach the other side of the world. The exhibition draws its name ‘It Will Be’ from the poem’ 22nd Century’, which the artist borrowed from a song from 1970 by the musician Exuma who is a Bahamian visionary, humanistic philosopher, and people’s poet. In his poem, Exuma foresees the future both in the moment and through the past. Mats Hjelm combines images, sound, music, and poems to transform a complex narrative into an immersive experience that remains a prophecy, and raises more questions than providing answers to our uncertain future. Mats Hjelm captures unconventional images from various places, creating narratives that predict the future through the past. The exhibition titled ‘It Will Be’ draws inspiration from the 1970 song ’22nd Century’ by musician Exuma, which foresees the future both in the moment and through the past. Hjelm’s immersive experience raises more questions than answers, transforming the work into prophecies about our uncertain future. – Abir Boukhari, curator

Mats Hjelm, It Will Be, 2023, 4-channel video installation, 32 min.

Romanticized in literature and myth for its ability to heal and reaffirm, the sea offers an instinctive setting for Mats Hjelm’s meditation on the histories of the transatlantic Middle Passage – the part of the Atlantic slave trade in which millions of people from Africa were shipped to the New World. The title of the exhibition, Taste of Salt, already evokes a synaesthesic quality. Conceptual and formal tensions unfold in three works: a video installation, a film, and a musical installation, where Hjelm features live sound for the first time. Together, they create mutually dependent environments where Hjelm thinks within and beyond the cinema screen. When I first met him in 2012, Hjelm had just returned from Africa where he is currently working on the sequel for his documentary film Black Nation (2008). Shifting his political focus from the Civil Rights movements in the US to neocolonialism by the US in Africa, he asks: does Africa need to be saved? By whom, from what and what for? From Detroit, Hjelm follows Kojo, a hustler-turned-millionaire who now finances missionary work in Liberia. There, he meets Preston Jackson, a former street kid from Monrovia, who highlights enduring tensions between colonizer and colonized. Preston tells of the revelation where, in migrating from the hills to the big city, he sees the ocean for the first time – naIvely mistaking the vastness of the sea for a football field of continental proportions. This becomes the poetic trigger for what Hjelm calls an “impure meditation on the ocean,” an environment where all that is solid melts into salt water. In the film Ithaka (alluding to the island in Homer’s Odyssey), an array of sound and image dissonances and textual paraphrases flow in double and single screen sequences. Made of entirely original footage in color and infrared from the past year, Hjelm’s journey leads us through sites of personal significance at home, the US and Africa, and finally triangulating across the Atlantic to Brazil. Detroit reappears as a mythical place of origin for the artist. Where is his “Ithaca” after all? To reach his island, Ulysses must cross the sea, and so must the viewer. In History of the Eye, several miniature projectors show footage of moving seawater onto the floor, creating an intimate relationship between image and viewer. The room becomes the vessel wherein the water and the journey are contained, as if we were walking on water… …and hearing it, too. If during travel we meet diverse landscapes and colliding histories, we also hear different voices, some familiar, some strange. For Hjelm, sound becomes a visual medium with testimonials interspersed with gospel choirs, and excerpts from Samuel Beckett’s radio play Embers (1959), where a father-son motif alludes to Hjelm’s early works. A female voice reads stories drawn from multiple anonymous sources, and the music played is echoed by the live sound coming from behind the wall. In Those Out of Tune Also Have a Heart, yet another sonic dimension opens up in Hjelm’s sensory exploration voyage. We meet an unmanned electronic pipe organ that occasionally blurts out a strange melody – a MIDI version of khora music from Mali, translated into Western musical scales by collaborating musician Derek Gripper (SA) exclusively for this exhibition. Behind the instrument, images of unidentified landscapes forebode some scenes from Ithaka that loop us back into the other room. To come to something so simple, that we take for granted – to meet an experience such as seeing the ocean for the first time, may very well result in an odyssey towards our own “Ithaca,” where the ocean becomes an awakening of personal and historical consciousness as well as a possibility for salvation itself. – Isabel Löfgren, September 2013

Mats Hjelm, Taste Of Salt, 2013, video installation, photography, midi organ with vintage church pipes, dimensions variable.

The Healer consists of four photographic works with luminous signs, two parallel single-channel video installations, and a sound and video sculpture. The exhibition is a continuation of Kap Atlantis, a video-installation from 2003. In this work Hjelm explored existential dimensions of destructive historical legacies in reference to a dystopic vision of the future, inspired by Harry Martinson’s novel Aniara. With The Healer, Hjelm explores a similar strand by using narratives of futuristic prophecies that comment on the past as future memory. The main theme of the exhibition is based on the poem 22nd century by the artist Exuma, a Bahamian visionary, humanistic philosopher and people’s poet, that reflects a conception of the future as a false liberation. Whereas Harry Martinson’s novel drew on Vedic and Buddhistic traditions, Exuma draws on the more obscure Obeah cults in the Caribbean. Throughout the work, we hear songs of future prophecies that make us confront contemporary realities, as if they were warnings coming from a cautionary tale. Working conceptually with visual and sound triangulation as method, Hjelm develops narratives both in the individual pieces and in the exhibition as a whole. In the new video diptych, Left Eye and Right Eye, the soundtrack intertwines the two image feeds, and brings forth a poetic layering of existential and political narratives. In four photographic works, words from the soundtrack and from other sources light up the pieces and the exhibition room, forming an ensemble. In this exhibition, image, text and sound form a dense story about history and memory that operates as if in a crossroads, against the backdrop of physical and spiritual healing.

Mats Hjelm, The Healer, 2018, two channel video, EL-Wire and prints, dimensions variable.

Residents from Sweden

Aske Thiberg

Sweden, Denmark

Danish Arts Foundation

Studio #207

Edith Hammar

Sweden, Finland

IASPIS - The Swedish Arts Grants Committee's International Programme for Visual Artists

Studio #215

Gunilla Klingberg

Sweden

IASPIS - The Swedish Arts Grants Committee's International Programme for Visual Artists

2025

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Austria, Canada

Past Resident
2026: Federal Ministry of Housing, Arts, Culture, Media and Sport Republic of Austria

Artist

Marie-Andrée Pellerin

Marie-Andrée Pellerin is a pluridisciplinary artist who explores the interplay between the geological and societal realms. Her works employ a variety of media, including video, sound art, installation, performance and tufting. Her recent work engages with the poetics of weather, exploring how atmospheric phenomena shape soundscapes, mental states, and social narratives. Central to her practice is speculative thinking, through which she creates fictional institutions, new words and fake disciplines. She collaborates with musicians, meteorologists, linguists and writers.

Marie-Andrée Pellerin has exhibited work at BPS22 Art Museum of the Province of Hainaut, Belgium; Kunstforum, Austria; and Center for Contemporary Art (CCA), Scotland, among others.

Events & Exhibitions

Kairos TV: On Forecasting Monsters by Marie-Andrée Pellerin and Stanisław Welbel

April 28, 2026, 6:30–7:30pm

2026 Spring Open Studios

April 17–April 18, 2026

Artists at Work: Film Screening with Jade Kallio, Bernd Oppl, Marie-Andrée Pellerin, and Gaspar Willmann

January 27, 2026, 6:00–7:30pm

Marie-Andrée Pellerin, Une Seule oreille gigantesque capable d'absorber tous les bruits du monde, 2021, video installation, 10 min.

Marie-Andrée Pellerin, Cloud Coucou Land, 2017, video and sound installation, 4 min.

Marie-Andrée Pellerin, Vento Moderato, 2024, sound installation, wind instruments, lights and carpets.

Marie-Andrée Pellerin, blowrders, 2024, video installation, 12 min.

Marie-Andrée Pellerin, Moderate Chaos, 2025, mixed-genre performance.

Residents from Canada

Élise Lafontaine

Canada

Canada Council for the Arts

2026

Kent Merriman

Canada

Alberta Foundation for the Arts

Studio #213

Heather Nicol

Canada, United States

Canada Council for the Arts

2026

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Qatar

Past Resident
2026: Fire Station - Qatar Museums

Artist

Roda Al Nasr

Roda Al Nasr is a Qatari artist raised in England whose work explores identity, tradition, and contemporary life. Drawing inspiration from everyday moments in Qatar, she reimagines scenes through a bold, contemporary lens. Rooted in photorealism, her practice blends elements of Cubism, graffiti, and pop art. Through experimentation, vibrant color, and cultural symbolism, she creates visual narratives that reflect a life lived between two worlds.

Roda Al Nasr has exhibited work Fire Station Museum, Doha; Saatchi Gallery, London; and Kraftwerk Berlin, Berlin, among others.