Category: News

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Charlotte Clermont and Katariin Mudist at Copper Leg Art Residency – Open Doors

Charlotte Clermont

Originally from Canada, Charlotte Clermont is based in Helsinki after completing her master’s degree in Time and Space from Academy of Fine Arts of the University of the Arts Helsinki. Her most recent film du soleil, que ça existe, has been nominated by Nordic and Baltic Young Artist Award (2024) and is selected for upcoming exhibitions at Forum Box (Helsinki), and Gallery Hippolyte (Helsinki). Her work has been shown internationally in film festivals, such as Fracto (Germany), Festival des cinémas différents et expérimentaux de Paris (France), Edinburgh International Film Festival (Scotland), Festival ECRĀ (Brazil), 25th Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival (Czechia), Beijing International Short Film Festival (China), and Saigon Experimental Film Festival (Vietnam). She has been an artist in residence in Japan, Italy, Finland, Latvia, Estonia, and the United States.

With a background in analogue experimental film, my work explores the temporal dimensions of how the body shapes, preserves and creates what we perceive as reality. Recently, I have been interested in Marguerite Duras’s practice of rewriting her own works to reshape them with new emotions and temporalities. I approach rewriting not as a simple reprise but as a translation of memory—a recomposition through a displaced gaze and body. For the residency at Copper Leg, I will be using the black-and-white segments from my previous film du soleil, que ça existe to generate monochromatic color images. This analogue technique—where a negative and a positive strip of film run together through the camera—creates direct optical contact between two layers of emulsion. From these black-and-white materials, new colors emerge depending on how light interacts with differing film densities, color filters on the camera lens, and chemistry. 

At Copper Leg, she worked with black-and-white segments from her film du soleil, que ça existe to generate monochromatic colour images using 16mm analogue techniques.

Welcome to a 16mm analogue film screening.

www.charlotteclermont.com

Katariin Mudist

Katariin Mudist’s creative practice operates at the intersection of materiality, humour, and social observation, focusing on how humanity, the body, and norms manifest through form, texture, and process. She works intuitively with a range of materials, allowing them to guide the development of the work and paying particular attention to what is unfinished, uncomfortable, or still in the process of becoming. On January 24th, everyone is welcome to an open studio event, where Katariin will present her work process, methods, and current projects.

Katariin Mudist is one of the winners of the Young Sculptor Award 2025. The laureates were announced at the opening of the Award exhibition in February 2025 at Contemporary Art Museum of Estonia (EKKM).

Since 2021, Copper Leg has had the honour of supporting the winner of the Young Sculptor Award with a month-long residency, providing an opportunity for further creative development in a serene setting at Rae Schoolhouse in Vaskjala village.

Photos by Ott Kattel

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Big news!

We have big news for you! In the accompanying picture, there are 2 persons, Janno Bergmann, the current coordinator of the Copper Leg Art Residency, on the right, and Erik Alalooga, the future coordinator of the Copper Leg Art Residency, on the left.

Erik describes himself as an installation, sound, and performance artist. His educational background is in sculpture (BA) and interdisciplinary art (MA) from the Estonian Academy of Arts. Currently, he is studying for a doctoral degree in theater arts at the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre.
That’s not all, in addition, you will have the opportunity to see and hear the collaborative project of these two artists “Cleaning Voice” on February 10 at the international sound art festival “The walls have ears” in the ARS Art Factory.

Event info: https://www.facebook.com/events/2473280219495436
Event webpage: https://www.seintelonkorvad.ee

 

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Alberonero

Alberonero [black tree] is a designer, painter, sculptor, and sometimes a farmer. Born in Lodi (1991), he soon started experimenting with painting in relationship to the physical space through graffiti techniques. While studying Interior Design at the Polytechnic University of Milan, he had the chance to merge experience with theory and embrace a cross-disciplinary practice.  

His last project Campo [field] stems from his need to reset his being in Nature. From 2020 to 2021 he lived in symbiosis with a field of 290 poplar trees destined to be cut down, in the countryside of Campogalliano, Italy. Immersed amongst this ensemble of trees every day, he performed, created temporary installations, filmed, photographed, and interacted with the life of this environment: synthesis and symbol of nature as a whole. Artist states: “Trees are my companions and I wish to be a tree.” 

At Copper Leg residency Alberonero built a chair made of metal and grass. Equipped with wheels, it can accompany our movement in the landscape and suggest new experiences. It was used daily throughout his residency and symbolizes for the artist the desire to touch the landscape and take it with him. 

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Walking Vaskjala Traveler Letter / Sepa Sama

In collaboration with AIR Blekinge, the Copper Leg Residency was hosting in March artist Sepa Sama. 

Sepa Sama is an independent artist focusing on walking as artistic practice and research. 

Sepa is from the Iranian diaspora, a nomad that has lived in Asia, America, and Europe. Currently, Sepa is finishing his Ph.D. at Eugeniusz Geppert Academy of Fine Arts Wroclaw in Poland, focusing on walking. 

In Estonia at Copper Leg Residency, he was writing a traveler letter. An artist book named Walking Vaskjala Traveler Letter, 2022, a book that ties back to both his past and nowness.  

You can see the digital version of the book here:

https://www.sepasama.com/gallery-1/walkingvaskjala

Sepa Sama and Janno Bergmann at Copper Leg in March 2022

https://www.sepasama.com

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Marcella Giannini

Marcella Giannini is an Italo-Colombian artist and illustrator based in Rome. She has a BA in printmaking from the Academy of Fine Arts of Rome, a MA in printmaking from the CIEC Foundation in Spain and is currently finishing her MA studies in Papermaking at the Academy of Fine Arts of Rome.

Her work mainly combines papermaking techniques, textile art and natural dyes experiments. In her latest works, she uses her own-made paper thread to create tapestries with geometric patterns.

At Copper Leg Art Residency, she will combine textile techniques with natural dyes to create a functional sculpture that addresses the theme of inhabiting and community. The art object will be presented this Saturday at Rae Schoolhouse during the event “Sirakas”.

 

 

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Mari Prekup

Mari Prekup (b. 1984) paints-prints-draws and curates usually around Haapsalu and Tallinn. She graduated from the Estonian Art Academy in painting (BA 2007) and printmaking (MA 2015), studied additionally at the fine art academies in Latvia, Riga, and Poland, Krakow. Member of printmaking studio Grafodroom since 2009.

Her exhibitions are usually triggered by various nonsense: random beauty, the absurd, injustice, and melodrama, dissonance, and interesting little tidbits of info.

Lately, she has been taking turns researching Estonian- and Fennougric natural holy places folklore and fun biases in pseudosciences like phrenology and eugenics – together with such national sports like rewriting/re-interpreting historical events.

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Ingrid Helena Pajo, Maarja Mäemets, Eugenio Marini

Ingrid Helena Pajo is a textile artist working mostly with weaving techniques, based in Tallinn, Estonia. Right now, she’s finishing MA studies at the Estonian Academy of Arts, in the textile department. Previously she has also studied printmaking in Rome and Illustration in Urbino.

In her practice, she’s looking for the simplest and less intrusive ways of working and living. In Copper Leg Art Residency, she’s looking for methods to put the ancient techniques of weaving in use with found materials.

 

Maarja Mäemets (b. 1991 in Tartu) is an artist, freediver, and a yogini. She reflects her own fragility and constantly morphing feelings, thoughts, and circumstances in her work. She believes there are no standstills, only constant motion in which there is a high chance to lose oneself.

Mäemets has a BA (2015) and MA degree (2018) in glass art from the Estonian Academy of Arts. In 2017 she studied for a semester at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna in Heimo Zobernig’s class, where her more multidisciplinary approach as an artist started to shape. Since then, her work focuses on combining glass art, photography, and video. She creates mostly site-specific installations and seeks unusual exhibiting environments – such as the depths of underwater. The beauty of words and writing plays a vital role in the concepts and spaces created along her journey.

Copper Leg Art Residency has become an important leisure time for Mäemets. The place offers valuable moments of being. Silence for cultivating yoga and other body-mind practices. The one-of-a-kind emptiness thus created in one’s head works as an effective filter when visualizing and planning upcoming projects. In addition, after a fifteen-year break, the artist has once again an opportunity to turn the wheel of a printing press in her hands.

 

Eugenio Marini is based in both Rome and Tallinn. His practices are focused on the use of scrap and found materials as a medium to reflect on the idea and meaning of utility in today’s living. In Copper Leg he’s working on a series of sculptures imitating the shape of corals, using an old wire net found on the site. For him, the rusty and robust nets are like ruins and at the same time their lightness and transparency make them ghostlike – resembling the illusion of usefulness.

 

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Sven-Erik Stamberg & Meelis Salujärv

Sven-Erik Stamberg was born in 1970. Tallinn, 1995 graduated from the Estonian Academy of Arts with a degree in industrial art. Since 1997. an active member of the group Liquid and has participated in the work of Studio22 since 1998. He has exhibited his work on numerous joint exhibitions, both at home and abroad, and since 2004. also organized personal exhibitions.

The main creative forms of expression are collage techniques and geometric ink drawing. Into the Copper Leg Art Residency, the artist came to look for a distance from the noisy world, enjoy the silence, and concentrate on introspection, which will finally find expression in his new collage series.

 

Meelis Salujärv is from Tallinn, Estonia, studied in an art class at school and later improved himself at Studio 22 under the supervision of Tõnis Vint. Founding member of the art group Liquid, a multi-talent who has been involved in visual arts, poetry, audiovisual art, and music for decades.

At Copper Leg Art Residency, he has focused on electronic sounds – the music he creates, with an analog synthesizer built by artist-electronic Villem Jahu.

 

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Ulvi Haagensen

Ulvi Haagensen is an Australian-Estonian artist, born in Sydney. She has been living and working in Tallinn for many years and is currently doing her Ph.D. in artistic research at the Estonian Academy of Arts.

Ulvi’s art practice and research is multi-disciplinary and combines installation, sculpture, drawing, performance, and video to explore the connections and overlaps between art and everyday life.

She came to Copper Leg Art Residency to focus on cleaning, as a type of performance and to look at the actions of cleaning and the tools we use. But as often happens, plans change. And though she has made some cleaning tools and filmed herself cleaning, she has also been drawing, thinking about drawing, and looking at animal and human footprints and tyre tracks in the snow. These lines of prints, crossing, and overlapping, make very large and beautiful collaborative drawings.

Artist’s website: https://ulvihaagensen.weebly.com/