Residency
Create, Research and Connect
VArt Residency offers artists, curators, researchers, writers and cultural practitioners the opportunity to live and work in the rural landscape of North Karelia, Finland.
Located in the village of Värtsilä, surrounded by forests and lakes, the residency provides time, space and a supportive environment for focused artistic work, research and experimentation.
Our residency programme welcomes both emerging and established practitioners working across disciplines, with a particular interest in material-based practices, community engagement and international cultural exchange.
Our Story
The residency in Värtsilä was established in 2022 by Finnish artist Karoliina Arvilommi in response to the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Through collaboration with HIAP and the Ukraine Solidarity Residencies Programme (USRP), the residency became part of a wider network supporting Ukrainian artists displaced by war.
Over time, the residency developed into a broader international programme and later became one of the foundations of VArt.
The support of local residents, volunteers and the municipality of Tohmajärvi played an essential role in this development and continues to be an important part of the residency's identity today.
Community and Local Connections
We believe that a residency is more than accommodation and workspace.
VArt has grown through collaboration between artists, local residents, volunteers, cultural organisations and the municipality of Tohmajärvi. We encourage residents to engage with the surrounding community, share knowledge and participate in the cultural life of the region when appropriate.
Many long-term partnerships and friendships within VArt began through residency stays.
Residents
VArt residents are artists and cultural practitioners whose work connects material knowledge, artistic research, experimentation and cultural dialogue.
Renata Asanova
Ukraine
Renata Asanova is a Ukrainian artist of Crimean Tatar origin whose practice explores memory, displacement and identity. She works across painting, drawing and ceramics, engaging with her heritage through imagined inner landscapes shaped by loss, longing and belonging.
Her projects explore memory as something evolving rather than fixed, combining intuitive processes with symbolic and biomorphic forms that evoke fragility, protection and transformation. Through material and image, Renata investigates how identity can be reconstructed and how personal and collective histories can take new forms.
During her residency at VArt, Renata will work primarily with clay, creating new organisms and experimenting with forms that emerge intuitively. She will explore how shapes can grow, transform and acquire a sense of life through the process of making. Inspired by the surrounding landscape and the calm, natural environment of Värtsilä, she will investigate how new ceramic forms can inhabit and interact with nature. She may also work with painting, responding to the new environment and the state it evokes.
Residency: 2026
Country: Ukraine
Discipline: Visual Arts, Painting, Ceramics, Mixed Media
Instagram: @asanova_renata
Andrii Kyrychenko
Ukraine
Andrii Kyrychenko is a Ukrainian ceramic artist and member of both the National Union of Artists of Ukraine and the International Academy of Ceramics (IAC). For more than twenty-five years he has combined artistic practice, craftsmanship and cultural activity through contemporary ceramics.
His works are held in museum collections in Europe and Asia and have been exhibited internationally. In recent years, alongside his artistic practice, he has also developed educational programmes dedicated to ceramic arts.
During his residency at VArt, Andrii continued working on his internationally exhibited porcelain series Flowering Phases. The residency provided space for concentrated studio practice, experimentation and the further development of a body of work that explores form, transformation and the expressive possibilities of porcelain.
Residency: 2026
Country: Ukraine
Discipline: Ceramics, Porcelain
Instagram: @andrii.kyrychenko.ceramic
Ielizaveta Portnova
Ukraine
Ielizaveta Portnova is a Ukrainian ceramic artist whose practice is rooted in more than two decades of professional work with clay. Educated as a ceramic artist in Kyiv, she has developed a distinctive artistic language through continuous experimentation with form, material and surface.
Her works are represented in museum collections internationally and have received recognition through numerous exhibitions and competitions. For Portnova, ceramics is both a medium and a language through which she communicates with the world.
During her residency at VArt, Ielizaveta began a new series combining ceramics and wool, exploring the relationship between contrasting materials and tactile experiences. She also worked with wood-firing techniques, expanding her practice through experimentation and engagement with unfamiliar production processes.
Residency: 2025
Country: Ukraine
Discipline: Ceramics
Instagram: @keramius
Nataliia Kushnir
Ukraine
Nataliia Kushnir is a Ukrainian visual artist working across painting, sculpture, installation and animation. Her practice explores the relationship between human experience and natural processes, drawing parallels between growth, transformation, coexistence and survival.
Working with materials collected from the environment, Kushnir creates works that combine personal reflection with ecological awareness. Natural fragments, found objects and traces of time become part of new artistic ecosystems, where each element carries its own memory and history.
During her residency at VArt, Nataliia developed projects inspired by the landscapes of Finland and her experience of living between different places and identities. Through sculpture, textiles and stop-motion animation, she explored themes of migration, belonging and the dialogue between human beings and the natural world.
Residency: 2025
Country: Ukraine
Discipline: Painting, Sculpture, Installation, Animation
Instagram: @natusianeochen
Mariia Tseloeva
Ukraine
Mariia Tseloeva is a Ukrainian curator and artist based in Paris. Her work combines archival research, curatorial practice and artistic methodologies to explore memory, exile, cultural heritage and intergenerational transmission.
Particular attention in her practice is given to women's histories, folk traditions and personal narratives that have been overlooked or erased from official histories. Through archives, textiles, storytelling and writing, she investigates how memory can be reconstructed and reimagined.
During her residency at VArt, Mariia worked on a project dedicated to her Crimean Tatar family history and the artistic legacy of Zuleikha Bekirova. Her research explored the possibilities of restoring presence where history has left absence, loss and silence.
Residency: 2025
Country: Ukraine
Discipline: Research-Based Art, Textile Practices, Writing
Instagram: @tseloeva