Hello 2019! Residents of the first month in the new year are: Marlaina Read (AU), Tara Langford (GB), Natalija Vujosevic (YU-ME), Kristina Maric (HR), Sandra Kosorotova (EE), Emily Dundas Oke (CA).

Sandra’s textile and text-based practice can be located between the margins of art and design. Most of her artworks act as such only in the exhibition spaces, otherwise they function as wearable clothes, accessories, and interior textiles.

At Nida Art Colony Sandra will be working on a publication Inadmissible Lyrics which consists of texts and images by the artist along with quotes from other authors. The book will take a physical form of a collection of scarves and will be issued as limited-edition prints with the music label Serious Serious. During the residency, the artist will be simultaneously working and editing the book.

Emily Dundas Oke (CA) (b. 1993) is an artist and curator. She studied Philosophy and Visual Art (BA) at Thompson Rivers University in Canada. Her philosophical research in epistemology guides her interest in works that deal with the conception of social history. Currently, she is the co-curator of ARTIST AS A DIGITAL ARCHIVIST, an international video-works project with screenings and discussions in Norway, Lithuania, and Canada.

As an artist, Emily works between mediums to navigate conceptions and interventions of public spaces, often employing photography and installation to examine the role of perception in shaping our phenomenological experiences.

Throughout her residency at Nida, she will continue both curatorial and artistic investigations into the notion of the ‘archive’, further developing work that posits an archive without an object. Emily will explore the role of the body as a historiographic tool or knowing subject that contributes to multi-vocal histories while researching how territorial markers, historical agreements, and occupation of land become monumentalized in writing and public consciousness.

Through performances and multimedia installations, the artist assumes a position which varies from an active provocation to an intentional and consciously elected passivity. She uses absurd moments in her work to penetrate beyond the ordinary, everyday experience of reality. Her goal is to provoke the viewers way of seeing the world and her own artistic position.

During the residency, Kristina will create a series of video works and photographs which show the psychological and bodily relationships of the author with the environment and forms a whole new image of spiritual absurdity. She will also work on actions, such as burying in the ground, running into the wasteland, scent marking that function as repeated statements of the rebellion against the dehumanized environment from which the artist has a need to escape.

Her practice uses immersive and ephemeral site-specific installation, photography, sound and film. She is interested in exploring affect where industry, environment, and the human intersect. Her current practice explores the culture and histories found in folklore, place marking, labour and ritual.

At Nida Art Colony Marlaina will work on the project, which started with research drawn from Iceland, Canada, Scotland and Norway—countries which share topography, climate, maritime and migration histories. The artist is interested to contrast this with the unique sea-bound and forged area of the Curonian Spit and its fishing and maritime cultures and history. She will create an artwork responding to local maritime traditions, ghosts, and haunting.  

Tara Langford is an artist, designer, and lecturer living and working in London. She works across print, moving image, and installation. She explores the complexity and plurality of the relationship between image and language and its numerous possibilities of generating meaning, realities, and fictions. Tara is the course leader of BA Design for Art Direction at LCC of University of the Arts London.

Natalija Vujošević studied at Cetinje Art Academy, now lives and works in Montenegro. She produces installation, video, and art books. She is the co-editor of Trema press and the founder of the Institute for Contemporary Art of Montenegro.

At Nida Art Colony Tara and Natalija will design a collection of garments and designed sets inspired by the codified aesthetic forms of society constructed identities. Exploring the formation of subjectivities and identities in response to political, economic and social backdrops of both artists and their research interests builds on their skills and work in curating, art, fashion, and education.