5 years of PortRe - portfolio residency program

It’s been five years since the Finnish Cultural Institute in Denmark organised PortRe together with the Stina Krook Foundation for the first time. The Finnish Cultural Institute’s intern Emma Reijonen has interviewed the four first PortRe artists to hear if and how the residency affected their work and how they look back at the residency. 

PortRe is a week-long residency program in Copenhagen with a focus on the artist’s portfolio. The residency’s purpose is to create an opportunity for emerging Finland-based visual artists to come to Copenhagen and present their portfolios to established actors on the Danish cultural field. Since 2019, with an exception during 2021, the residency program has welcomed two artists a year. 

The first PortRe artist was the Helsinki-based sculptor Maisa Majakka. Her works range from miniature portraits of animals to large ceramic sculptures and wall works depicting humans. At the time Maisa did the residency, she was studying to get a Master’s at the Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki, working towards her graduation exhibition. She remembers the residency fondly. 

“It was magical to me.”

During her week, Maisa met with many curators and gallerists and got her introduction to the art scene in Copenhagen. It was through the residency and all the portfolio reviews that Maisa became completely comfortable with presenting her work and talking about it openly with anyone. 

“Through the meetings I also realized that many of the gallerists were actually interested in my work and open towards possibly working together in the future. This boosted my self-esteem and gave me hope in a time where I felt unsure if I could support myself as an artist and whether I’m a good fit in the art world or not. “

Looking back at the memories Maisa made during her week in Copenhagen, she points out that the most memorable ones are a little embarrassing to share. 

She did a road trip with the institute to Louisiana Museum of Modern Art. After the museum visit and dinner, Maisa wanted to see a Danish bar, as some bars still allow indoor smoking. 

“The next day was full of meetings, and I woke up horribly hungover. I couldn't get any food down and felt like I was going to die. I had to actually find a pharmacy to buy some travel sickness pills because I felt so bad. But I survived my condition, and actually had a great meeting that day.”

The connection Maisa made at that meeting led to an exhibition in Copenhagen two years later.  

It’s been five years since Maisa did her residency. Since then, she has graduated with a Master of Fine Arts, found a studio and then a better studio, bought two ceramic kilns and adopted a second dog.  

She has held solo exhibitions in Denmark, Germany and Finland and participated in a bunch of group shows including the Finnish Young Artists exhibition in 2023. Her work is currently on display in Kerava’s Art and Museum Centre Sinkka, in a clay exhibition showing works borrowed from various private and public collections. It is Maisa’s first major museum exhibition. She has had her work displayed in four different museums during 2024. Currently she is making her first public artwork, which will be ready sometime in 2025.  

For the future, Maisa dreams about creating a bond with a bird, growing pumpkins and recording an audio book. She also dreams about exhibiting her work in the room with saintpaulia in the Kaisaniemi Botanic Garden: ceramic horses bathing in the waterfall and pond.

In November 2019, after Maisa, it was time for the second PortRe artist Sixten Sandra Österberg to come to Copenhagen. Sixten Sandra is based in Stockholm and primarily works with oil on canvas, creating paintings that often feature human figures. 

The PortRe residency was Sixten Sandras first and, so far, only residency. 

“It was an incredibly exciting experience. It felt amazing to travel with my art and be introduced to new aspects of the art world, like curators and collectors, which were all new to me at the time. In 2019, my creative process was similar to how I work today, though my expression has since become more direct and refined.”

She had begun to find her own direction in painting during her first semester of studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki. 

“Several key artists, particularly painters, guided me toward new avenues within figurative art. At this point, I became interested in deconstructing realism.”

When Sixten Sandra did her residency, she had just graduated with her Bachelor's. She had started to feel more confident in her artistic expression for the first time. She remembers the residency feeling like a luxury. 

“To be fully immersed in an intense art schedule, with kind, fun people taking care of me, guiding me through the city and introducing me to different art stuff.”

Since the residency five years ago, Sixten Sandra graduated with a Master of Fine Arts from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm. She has also held solo exhibitions in Stockholm and New York City, participated in a group show in Paris and created a self-portrait for an exhibition on romanticism at Nationalmuseum in Stockholm. She also completed a collaboration with Grafikens Hus in Stockholm, where she created an edition of lithographs. Sixten Sandra considers her personal art-ego-dreams fulfilled.  

“Beyond that, I dream that another world is possible! I’m working on finding a better balance in my work schedule, and I’m gradually getting there. It would be wonderful to have more time to visit my friends in Gothenburg and maybe play in a band again.”

After a break during the COVID-19 pandemic, the PortRe residencies were back in 2021. Helsinki-based Nikki Jääskeläinen did her residency in October that year. As well as drawing and doing sculptures using mixed media, Nikki is also a gardener and an arborist student. She graduated in 2012 with a Master of Fine Arts from the Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki.

For Nikki the residency was exciting, as well as socially both demanding and useful. She received a lot of tips and gained new perspectives on her work. She found the meetings to generally be good, but also experienced challenging encounters.

“For a shy solo artist, it was confusing and exciting to spend a week with people who are such natural networkers. Fortunately, the social side was counterbalanced by wonderful parks and museums.”

During her residency she was in a kind of incubation period with her art, looking for the next thing to start working on. Almost consecutive to her residency in Copenhagen, she did one in the Åland archipelago.  

“These two residencies had a big influence on the next steps of work and exhibitions.”

Outside her residency schedule, Nikki ate oysters for the first time, saw Jenny Holzer posters, rode her bike and got food poisoning (not from the oysters). 

One major project Nikki worked on after the residency periods was the spatial art project There Might be Corners but the Center is on the Move, created in collaboration with Anna Nyberg, Helén Svensson and Ella Tahkolahti. The quartet asked Katie McDougall, whom Nikki had met during the PortRe residency, to write about the project. Katie then worked with Nikki for three exhibitions and an essay collaboration, until November 2023. Katie’s essays were published in So & So Magazine and later in a book the group self-published. The project continues under the name Corners. 

“Right now, art is waiting to happen, with life being so full with studies and new work. I hope there will come a time when I will pick up pens, brushes, ink and paper again, and have time to stare into the void and let my hand and mind wander freely.”

A month after Nikki, Helsinki-based Joel Slotte came to Copenhagen for the residency. Joel works mainly with painting and drawing, but gets outlets to explore other visual languages and ideas from ceramics, printmaking and hand embroidery. He has a Master of Fine Arts from the Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki.

Joel enjoyed his week in Copenhagen: presenting his portfolio to museum directors, gallerists, artists, curators and art historians. 

“The conversations were definitely very in-depth and I got so much out of it. I feel like I got both challenged and validated in regards to my artistic practice and also got valuable insight in how to navigate working together with institutions, curators and galleries.”

During the residency’s meetings and conversations, Joel focused on being in the moment and taking notes. 

“It felt like a rare opportunity to get such an intense wave of insight and comments on my art and my career that I wanted to keep myself present at all times. I knew I would have time to digest everything once I got home from the residency. During the evenings I was sitting in the hotel room processing all the meetings of the day by drawing.”

One of these drawings ended up being shown the following year in the ARS22 exhibition at Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma.

One memory Joel will always remember is being on the way to ARKEN Museum for Samtidskunst with the institute and getting stuck in traffic, listening to high energy punk. On the way back, the institute’s director Esa Alanne and the then programme manager Sini Pesonen really wanted to catch a football game, so instead of them driving Joel back to his hotel, he joined them and went to watch the football game, drink beer and eat sushi. 

After the residency, Joel has been busy. As a direct result of the residency, he got the opportunity to show his work at Galleri Kant in Copenhagen in the summer of 2022. He has also got his work shown at Turku Art Museum and Galerie Anhava as well as some smaller art spaces. In the beginning of 2024, Joel did an exhibition of screen prints, polymer sculptures and “specimen jars” in Paja Galleria called Museum of Speculative Anatomy. The “museum” also had a “museum shop” where visitors could buy museum shirts, tote bags and skateboards. 

Careerwise Joel dreams of a more manageable schedule for the future. He gets very excited about new projects and thus not always enough free time. Other than that, Joel is simply dreaming of a fun, fulfilling and exciting life.

“Based on previous experiences I know that among other things, my profession takes me towards that!”