My source of inspiration is often the past, childhood memories, family photos, dreams I only partially remember, sometimes even nightmares. I like to look at pictures that were taken sometime in the past by chance, and most of my works are based on a passing glance.
I build each hand-printed work by adding translucent layers of color to the paper. The long work process consists of adding, erasing, covering and cutting, and the end result is a unique composition with a rich and multifaceted surface.
I use experimental methods in my work, which I consciously apply from the point of view of the multi-level collage concept of contemporary art, so that I spontaneously choose, combine and juxtapose different shapes, structures and colors. I like that each element can randomly find its place in a kind of puzzle.
In my artistic work, I combine images I have taken from various sources with my own thoughts and let the printmaking process lead. Through my work, I try to understand who I am and why my mind has wanted to keep these memories. (Kuvan Spring 2021)
Natalie Hamada (1994, Syria) lives and works in Helsinki.
I often use block lithography, woodcut and rolling techniques in my works. I am interested in the possibilities created by different printing techniques and the limitations they bring when building an image.
An important part of working for me is the process, pressing the meanings of the created trace and problem solving within the limitations produced by technology. Techniques, features and materials related to working are often combined in my works as part of the visual content of the works.
Thus, my works deal with the construction and dissolution of the image – as if the work has some goal towards which it is built. More generally, you could think that I investigate the questions of seeing, observing, experiencing and existing with my works.
Jenni Niskala
I make small pictures of small things. Ordinary, everyday things and places, found treasures and noticed expressions are transformed into pictures on stone, copper or wooden slabs. Although the making of a picture looks different under the conditions of different techniques, all sprawling thoughts end up as part of the same archive, where everything can be meaningful, worth carving or etching.
Working on the image slowly calms that rambling and the medium sets its own limits for working. When I make enough unrelated parts, sometimes I etch stone, grind copper and paint on a wooden plate, they form a whole. Images stick to each other like words and become sentences, arcs.
The only Sinda
