Beijing – Melbourne – Luleå – Artists talk!
As covid-19 has spread over the world and affects us all on different levels Iaspis Umeå invites you to a seminar and artist presentations with our residence holders for 2021, Yingmei Duan and Geoff Robinson. Together with artist Sara Edström and moderator Micael Norberg we will talk about differences and similarities and how lockdowns and the covid situation has affected the artistic practice in our different countries.
Photo: Sara Edström.
Yingmei Duan is part of the Chinese avant-garde, working creatively for many years living in the legendary art district of Beijing’s East Village. In 1995 she participated in the performance “To Add One Meter to an Anonymous Mountain” which is considered to be one of the classics of Chinese contemporary art. Being based in the East Village as freelance artist between 1993–1995 prompted her curiosity, which led to her interest in performance art and has had a great impact on her later art career. The final turning point came when she began to study at Marina Abramović at HBK Braunschweig/Germany in 2000, Since that time Yingmei Duan has dedicated herself to performance art as her artistic expression.
Geoff Robinson is a Melbourne-based artist working on Wurundjeri country. Robinson creates event-based artworks that utilise the temporal qualities of sound and performance and the spatial conditions of physical sites to unravel the durational layers of place. Robinson has presented projects with Titanik, Turku; Bus Projects, Melbourne; Liquid Architecture, Melbourne; and MoKS, Mooste, Estonia. He was awarded the Melbourne Prize for Urban Sculpture 2014 and completed the PhD project Durational Situation at MADA, Monash University, Melbourne, 2018.
Sara Edström is an artist who has lived and worked in Luleå in Norrbotten her whole life. Luleå is the place where she combines her own artistic practice with running the self-organized Gallery Syster. After a life as a sculptor, she had to do something new and thus began at the age of 50 making music. She deals with question of doubt and crisis, on how success is defined and by whom and on how to create your own context, long-term sustainable life as an artist and as a human being. Art and life float together, and have done so even more during a crisis in life when everything needed to be turned inside out. Words needed to get out and be spoken. She calls them her Midlife Crisis Pop Songs.
Moderator, Micael Norberg is a representative of the Iaspis collaborative group in Umeå, an artist, Senior Lecturer and the Deputy Head of Department at the Academy of Fine Arts, Umeå University. Educated at at the Academy of Fine Art in Trondheim, Norway, Koninklijke Academie van Beeldende Kunst in Den Haag, Holland and the Academy of Fine Arts in Umeå Sweden in early 90’s.
IASPIS residency programme in Sweden has studios for international artists in Stockholm, and courtesy of collaborative partners in Göteborg, Malmö and Umeå.
Each year Iaspis awards two international artists a three month grant for a residency in Umeå. The grant holders are nominated and hosted by the local partners. During 2021 Yingmei Duan and Geoff Robinson will be grant holders in residence in Umeå.
IASPIS partners in Umeå include: Umeå Kommun (Moa Krestesen), Umeå konsthögskola (Micael Norberg), Bildmuseet Umeå (Lisa Lundström), Vita Kuben (Helena Vikström), Museum Anna Nordlander (Mia Rogersdotter Olofsson), Verkligheten (Sandra Wasara).