LAPS grad­u­ates re­ceive Kone Foun­da­tion working grants

19.12.2023 1 Like 0 kommenttia Tero Nauha

LAPS programme has reason to gratulate Stefanía Olafsdottír and Onur Tayranoğlu who received a grant from Kone Foundation to develop and continue their artistic practices in 2024 and 2025.

LAPS programme has reason to gratulate Stefanía Olafsdottír and Onur Tayranoğlu who received a grant from Kone Foundation to develop and continue their artistic practices in 2024 and 2025.
In the performance series titled ”Dear BioDaddy,” Stefanía Olafsdottír delves into the complexities of Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ART), specifically sperm donation, exploring its violent histories and unexpected consequences with a geographic focus on Scandinavia. As a TechnoChild, born through ART, Stefanía is entangled in the biopolitical webs of these realities and curates a performance space to confront and embrace the paradoxes inherent in family concepts. The research explores questions of identity in relation to gender and nationhood, paralleling the inquiry into biological inheritance. The focus is on community building based on technological commonality and home-making in a beyond-human world. The work aims to inhabit and find a home in the paradoxical spaces of the individual’s identity, leading to a deeper exploration of the construct of family and a reorientation towards the concept of home.

Onur Tayranoğlu is a transdisciplinary performance artist, based in Helsinki. They approach various mediums such as text, video, digital media and installation through performance and theory based research processes. Their artistic practice is informed and inspired by intersectional experiences, practices, histories and theories of queerness. In their two-year-long experiment, “Queer Autonomous Zone Along the Pink-line” Onur Tayranoğlu embarks on creating a queer autonomous zone along the pink-line, a rhetorical border dividing Finland and Turkey. The pink-line, conceptualized by South African journalist Mark Gevisser, serves to analyze global divisions based on queerfriendliness with roots in racism and colonialism. Utilizing this rhetorical landscape, the Onur engages in speculative work for intersectional queer liberation, collaborating trans-nationally with LGBTQ+ communities in Finland and Turkey. The collaborative efforts encompass public interventions, performances, exhibitions, and performative gatherings with visual artist Melisa Yağmur Saydı.

Congratulations to Stefanía and Onur!