"Scenography of Horror" – Patrik Aarnivaara and Maija Rudovska for the HIAP

January 8, 2014
Author Echo Gone Wrong

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…a house comes to live: the walls are crumbling, the floor is shaking, the water tap starts running, doors slam shut… 

Swedish artist Patrik Aarnivaara and Latvian curator Maija Rudovska are currently in collaboration for the project Scenography of Horror at the HIAP. The project seeks to look at architecture as a stage where fear, shock and deterrent can be constructed and performed. Be it the former prison which now is a luxury hotel or the fortification on an island where many people once were killed, these are among several examples of places where history revives, imagination unfolds and fantasies come into life.

HIAP is a short name of the Helsinki International Artist Programme. HIAP is one of the largest international residency centres in Finland that focuses primarily on the Visual Arts and is open to artists and curators from various disciplines. Among the former residents of HIAP are Valentinas Klimašauskas, curator at CAC Vilnius and Dovilė Tumpytė, curator at National Art Gallery in Vilnius as well as artists Antanas Gerlikas, Robertas Narkus and Krišs Salmanis to name a few.

Every year between up to 90 art professionals from around the world are offered a working period of 1–3 months in the HIAP residency studios in Helsinki. HIAP also hosts shorter visits by art professionals invited by local art institutions or working independently on their own projects.

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Maija Rudovska (1982, Latvia) is an independent curator and researcher. She has completed Curatorlab postgraduate studies at Konstfack University College of Arts, Crafts and Design in Stockholm and has obtained an MA from the Art Academy of Latvia. Rudovska has curated/co-curated such projects as ‘Inside and Out’ at kim? Contemporary Art Centre (2012/2013), ‘Expired Monument: Story of a Culture Palace’ (with Shirin Sabahi, 2011), ‘Regard: Subversive Actions in Normative Space’ (Moderna Museet, Sockholm, 2010), ‘Hardijs Ledins (1955-2004) – Zeitgeist and the Atmosphere of a Place’ (Riga Art Space, Riga, 2009), and others. At the moment she is running a curatorial network ‘Blind Carbon Copy’ (with Juste Kostikovaite) and engaging in various curatorial projects.

Patrik Aarnivaara (1977, Uppsala) currently lives and works in Malmö, Sweden. Solo exhibitions include: “Slow Motion is Monumental Sculpture”, Gallery Charlotte Lund, Stockholm (2012) and “A Monument Which Needs a Shape, Which Needs a Story, Which Needs a Text, Which Needs Letters”, Johan Berggren Gallery, Malmö (2010). Selected group exhibitions include: “Muted Fanfare for the Shy”, Narrative Gallery, London (2013); “The Ghost of a Movement”, Embassy Gallery, Edinburgh (2013); “Inner Light”, Erica Fiorentini Gallery, Rome (2011) and “Murder at the Savoy – Exhibition of a Crime”, Malmö konsthall, Malmö (2010).

Images: “Suspiriia” (1977), dir. Dario Argento