The Narva Art Residency in the namesake Estonian border town is announcing its next open call to welcome artists and creatives for residency in 2023.
The Narva Art Residency, NART for short, established in collaboration with the Estonian Academy of Art and the Estonian culture ministry, is a unique cultural space that initiates and facilitates residencies, art exhibitions and hosts educational activities. It is a vibrant centre that welcomes a multitude of visitors and guests and has become close with the Narva community.
NART is in the town’s historic Kreenholm area that once hosted one of the largest textile manufacturing factories in Europe. The art residency is housed in a historic villa that was once home to the director of the factory.
The international artist-in-residence programme is open for artists and creatives operating across all arts – visual arts, music, performance, architecture, design, film, literature and curatorial practices, etc.
“The program aims to generate creative exchange between practitioners as well as strengthen ties with the local context. Artists are invited to create interactive, socially engaged and community-based work which would be relevant also to the locals of Narva. The engagement can be an event, a workshop – but even better if the engagement is already intertwined into the process of artmaking itself,” Arina Jegorova, an assistant at the residency, told Estonian World.
For example, in 2022, the residency hosted a Finnish sound artist Jaakko Autio who created a sound installation which included the input of three local choirs. German designer Leah Schulze did her fieldwork at Narva’s care home to design games for people with dementia and Mexican artist Elizabeth Guerrero recorded the stories of locals for a sound journey.
The residency is open for both single artists and artistic duos and lasts approximately two months. It offers free accommodation, working space, a shared kitchen and access to the Kreenholm factory.
Narva is located at the Estonian-Russian border in north-eastern Estonia. It’s the third-largest town in the country after Tallinn and Tartu with a population of over 57,000. Almost 88% of the town’s population are ethnic Russians.
Read also: How Estonian-based artists are taking over the Russian border
