Selected artists for the portfolio residency program PortRe 2020

Nikki Jääskeläinen and Joel Slotte are the two artists selected for PortRe 2020 - A portfolio residency program for emerging visual artists

PortRe is the Finnish Cultural Institute in Denmark´s 1-week long residency program in Copenhagen with focus on the artist’s portfolio. It is operated in collaboration with The Stina Krook Foundation (FIN) and was launched in 2019. The purpose of PortRe is to create an opportunity for emerging Finnish, or Finland-based, visual artists to come to Copenhagen and present their portfolios to a number of established actors on the Danish cultural field. For example, for gallerists, art critics, curators, collectors or other art professionals and commence on a constructive conversation around the artist´s portfolio. The portfolio is an important and necessary tool for visual artists, yet artists rarely have the possibility to discuss them with the people evaluating them. The aim with the program is to provide this possibility for emerging artists, in an early stage of their career, as a unique opportunity for development and rewarding dialogue between artists and art professionals.  

PortRe is a residency program by invitation only and welcomes 2 artists a year for a duration of 1 week each. The artists are selected by The Stina Krook Foundation´s board from candidates suggested by the foundation´s art experts: Kai Kartio and Leena Kuumola. 

This year’s selected artists are Nikki Jääskeläinen and Joel Slotte. Their residency periods will take place during 2020. 

Visual artist Nikki Jääskeläinen is based in Helsinki where she graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts with a degree in printmaking. Experimenting with everyday household materials making ink and charcoal drawings on them, Jääskeläinen’s work is repetitive, almost meditative. The drawings often mark their architectural surrounding flowing into the exhibition space. 

Based in Helsinki, Joel Slotte is a visual artist with a degree in painting from the Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki. The figurative and emotionally charged oil paintings in Slotte’s latest exhibition portrayed youths in everyday situations and environments. Slotte finds the tradition of oil painting a suitable tool to explore underlying feelings of unease and dread in everyday life moments.

The Stina Krook Foundation

The Stina Krook Foundation. The purpose of the Stina Krook Foundation is to support and promote visual arts and performing arts with a special consideration of the Swedish-speaking population in Finland. Stina Nicolaisen, nee Krook, established the foundation in December 1976. The first awards were presented on Stinas’ birthday on 15 March 1978. As of 2019, the foundation has distributed more than 500 awards to a total amount of 2 million euro. The surprise and joy has been great among the receivers, as the foundation does not accept applications. Instead, the board make its decisions based on suggestions by experts in the field of visual arts and performing arts.