iseasfinland

Francis Joy
I am originally from West Yorkshire in the north of England and have lived in Finland since 2004. More recently, I gained my PhD from the University Of Lapland Faculty Of Art and Design and the Arctic Centre, Rovaniemi, in the study of Saami religion and art.

Since 2006, I have engaged in multiple contexts with the study of Saami Religion and spiritual traditions, which has been characterized by engaging with Saami people from Norway, Sweden, Finland and the Kola Peninsula in north-west Russia. These include shamanism, cosmology, sacrifice and creation of drums for healing, ceremony, divination and illustrating oral narratives. Also, a study of prehistoric rock art in Finland, Norway and Sweden in relation to cosmological landscapes depicted on both ancient and contemporary Saami drums. Within the past three years, my research has also examined the appropriation of Saami cultural heritage into tourism in Finland.

I am currently working on a second book about new types of Saami drums, which is post-doctoral studies, and am hoping to have this research finished early in 2021. I have been self-employed since 2005, working as a Holistic Body Therapist, running a clinic in Helsinki, offering healing and consultation, as well as working internationally. Much of this work has been focussed on understanding addiction as a spiritual illness and its effects on the body, family and society in general with regard to trauma. Furthermore, there has been a long-term involvement with the Druids in the UK, and a study of trees, plants and sacred landscapes, ritual and ceremony in relation to cultural heritage and understanding my place within nature. Enclosed is a link to my website where additional information can be found regarding my work. https://druidman1962.wixsite.com/mysite
Contact via e-mail: druidman1962@yahoo.co.uk By Skype: fjoyrovaniemi

Hugo Peña Lagos is a Chilean Choreographer, Investigator and a Pedagogue in dance, a Researcher, BA in Dance from the Academia de Humanismo University; and with 5 years of Architecture at the Bio Bio University, Concepción, Chile.

University Teacher of Dance and Theatre career of the Faculty of Arts, Academia de Humanismo University (2007 – 2016). An Associate Researcher at the Latin American Aesthetics Research Center, Faculty of Music, University of Chile. Scholarship holder of the interdisciplinary laboratory MOVIMIENTO SUR, an international platform for contemporary dance and performing arts for Latin America in the year 2012 and 2014, and collaborating in the year 2015.

An Artistic Director and a Creator of the Al Margen Project where he investigates the relation of the body, memory and architecture through interdisciplinary proposals, creating works that have participated in important Festivals and tours of Latin America
Participates as an interpreter and as a choreographer of the Espiral Dance Company and other Chilean companies and Choreographers

Moldovan Smaranda Sabina was born in 1986, Timisoara, Romania. She currently is a PhD student at the Faculty of Arts and Design of Timisoara continuing her research on neoconceptualism. She has been involved in art social projects and believes in the connection that art must have with society. I would like my paintings to be seen as the idea of the process that is created by the interaction of ideas that lead to creation. Most of them are canvases that consist of fields of colour that have almost no structure or composition in order to get us back to the beginning of what we know like the elementary particles that we are made from. Colour is important to me and I have studied monochromes during the last 10 years and that is because I think colour by being a brain process, pure energy that moves through electromagnetic waves can lead the viewer to continue the canvas by having and experience of immersion in the primary time and space without being disturbed by the high amount of information that we have in our days and to remind him that we still have to put questions such as why?. It can be seen almost as a ground zero to develop new imagines and transform them through the mind. Some have interventions of strokes covered by layers and that is disobeying the rule of representing only the essential- as a protest to how much we accumulate, but it is only to leave a print or a mark of what was that moment. It is more a memory print covered up by other layers and integrated into the whole field, just like objects that we have owned left a trace on us. Experimenting is part o my research and it involves different medias such as installations and digital art.

Maria Huhmarniemi