Tanja Silvestrini ^{Noor kunstnik}

Kunstniku päritolumaa: Soome

During the past 9 years I have been studying art in both Norway and Finland, both inside and outside of institutions. First I studied two years in the preparatory art school Strykejernet in Oslo (2014-2016), and then had my first meeting with Finland when I came to work as the assistant of Antti Laitinen for four months in Somerniemi (Jan-May 2017). I did my BFA of contemporary art at the Fine Arts Academy of Bergen (2017-2020), in the performance art focus group with professor Frans Jacobi and Lilibeth Cuenca Rasmussen, and had an exchange to the Fine Arts Academy of Helsinki (Spring 2019). This experience made me want to come back to Finland. As I waited for the covid restrictions to ease up, I got my own studio in the old NRK building in Bergen, wokring independently. Then I applied to the MFA of Time & Space Arts at in August 2021 and started my studies in January 2022. As I’m writing this, it is the last day of the MFA degree show Kuvan Kevät, and I’m in the process of writing my thesis, with a plan to graduate in December this year. In this period I have performed and shown works Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland, and been on residency in Finland (Telegrafen, Utö, Olo Centre, Enonkoski and Villa Arttu, Hyvinkää (all 2019) and in Norway (AiR Kjerringøy, Kjerringøy (2020) and AiR Stokkøya, Åfjord (2021). In 2020 I participated in a 12-hour performance event in Galleri Christoffer Egelund, Copenhagen (DK) with my performance «Cat Person or Dog Person?». The same year, my work «A Liter of a Thousand Lakes» was shown in the Generation 2020 exhibition at Amos Rex, Helsinki. Last year, I did a collaborative performance with drag queen Emma Fended at the opening of the exhibition The Queer Gaze at KODE museum in Bergen (NO) for 200 people. But my biggest highlight is maybe the residency in Stokkøya, an island in Åfjord municipality (NO), where I spent October 2021 preparing a permanent public artwork for Roan Sykeheim, one of the municipality’s nursery homes. The work was unveiled April 2022 and consisted of a four part-performance and elements that are permanently on display in the nursery home. The work is owned by Åfjord municipality. As well as being an independent artist, I have also been an active part of the performance group Ninjas of Bergen, sitting in the board of Performance Art Bergen and Plot/Oslo, as well as starting the independent publishers Waaktaar forlag with my poet and artist friends Silje Waaktaar Åsheim and Kim Hankyul.