New Roots

Community Art Project with women migrants with irregular situations
Kaikkien naisten talo, Turku, Finland
Part of Between Happiness and Despair -project
Collaboration with Art House Turku, Finland and 
Kunsthal Nord, Aalborg, Denmark, supported by Center for Mental Well-Being in Aalborg and Turku Mental Health Association 

New Roots is a series of encounters with migrant women in irregular situations, framed as situated spaces for embodied engagement, material exploration, and shared reflection. Working with mutable materials such as kinetic sand and modelling clay, participants engaged in processes of transformation, addressing themes of growth, change, and adaptation. The work foregrounds relationality and dialogue, positioning the artistic process as a space for collective sense-making and the emergence of empathy.

Between Happiness & Despair examined artistic practice as a form of societal engagement in relation to mental well-being. The project began with a residency in Northern Jutland, situated in a rural coastal landscape. It continued through a series of artistic interventions, and two exhibitions in Aalborg and Turku, unfolding through encounters developed over time and presented within the exhibitions, foregrounding process, interaction, and situated experience.

The project introduced an educational dimension, creating a framework for dialogue and critical reflection on the emerging field of art and health, and on the position of the artist within it. In doing so, it addressed the ethical, methodological, and relational questions that arise when artistic practice operates at the intersection of art and care.

The residency included encounters with experienced artists, such as a workshop led by performance artist Inga Gerner Nielsen. Gerner Nielsen has developed the theme of the artist as a care worker through her long-term collaboration with nurses at the University College of Northern Denmark (UCN) in Hjørring, a line of work that has led to the publication In the Mirror of Care Work. Other mentor artists were Pia Skogberg and Marit Benthe Norheim. The project was led by Lasse Fischer.

The project brought together seven artists from Denmark and Finland: dancer and choreographer Birgitte Lundtoft, sound artist Ric Raphael Nitsch, multidisciplinary artist Nina Tose Markvardsen, author and death doula Marja Kangas, visual artist and designer Matilda Palmu, and community artist Eka Teriina Vea Kosonen and Nina Rantala.

For Rantala, the theme is ongoing and connects to her projects Sensory Rooms (2024–2026) and Enchanted Forest (2024–2028), both developed for the care environment of psychiatric TYKS Compass Hospital.

Photographs by Valentina Morales Buchmann and Nina Rantala