Finland Residency
Arteles Creative Center: Silence Awareness Existence Program, February 2020, Hämeenkyrö
Melanie Furtado was selected for a month-long artist residency at Arteles Creative Center in rural Finland. The Silence Awareness Existence program emphasized silence, sensory awareness, and daily contemplative practices, offering a focused environment for introspection and artistic exploration.
During this period of research and production, she developed new sculptural work, including Giulia from the Women: States of Being series, created in collaboration with Italian performance artist Giulia Mattera.
She also created a drawing series titled Observations, where she invited each of the 14 resident artists to sit for her in silence, gazing outward toward the Finnish winter landscape, while she captured their presence in direct, observational drawings. This work formed a collective portrait of the residency’s shared atmosphere — a meditation on stillness, perception, and connection.