ART RESIDENCY:

International artists live in the nude for ten days

Yelena Myshko (a Ukrainian artist) recently went on her first residency ever. She spent 10 days with a nudist community of Bare Oaks Family Naturist Park in Canada. In this residency by Arts Unfold called Naked State artists create artworks hat explore questions such as: What is nudity? Does stripping away clothing rid us of class, gender, and personal expression? Is nudity always sexual?

How did you find out about the residency programme? How did you apply?

My friend Marija Snieckute discovered the residency, thought it was something for me and then she let me know. She’s an academic I met in a feminist reading group. Not sure how she came across the Facebook post about the residency, but the character of my works made her think about me when she saw it. She encouraged me to apply.

What does your regular, art residency day look like?

Sleep, eat, walk, restart. Just kidding! I do take things easy and find it hard to keep going with my art because of the relaxed atmosphere. This was the first time I did a residency and found it challenging to manage all that free time. I was struggling with the different electricity plugs and bad internet, so most of the time I was trying to get my devices to work. But I managed to work in bursts, creating two series of photographs.

Tell us about the work/project on which are you working right now?

Now I’m trying to manifest some projects we cooked up with Salima Essakkati, better known as Avant-Garde Imam Salima El Musalima. We announced our collaboration in the summer through an article in a Dutch newspaper. It was based on our criticism of the local feminist milieu. We address it with a pro-active attitude, proposing feminist actionism as a solution for the mainstream artworld stagnation. Initially, I called our collaboration Public Enemy, but it gradually transformed into the hashtag #redwomenarecoming that we envision as a post-Guerrilla Girls, post-Pussy Riot and post-FEMEN movement for female performance artists. We want to shake up the world and seize our place in it.

In your experience, what distinguishes working as part of residencies from working in your atelier?

Management of free time. When I work at home, I’m usually busy with paperwork. I’m constantly applying for open calls and writing proposals to handpicked people and places. A lot of work goes into self-promotion. But I’m going to upgrade my game with mailing list software SendBlasterPro. At home, I struggle to get myself to make art and can manage to carve out 30 minutes of my time if I’m lucky. At the residency I had all the time I wanted, which was unusual for me and I was simply overwhelmed.