exhibition

WELL – international drawing residency 2026

| Emma Fält


July 24–29, 2026 | Niemelä House, Nerohvirta Village, Iisalmi, Finland

Applications are now open for WELL 2026, the 4th International Drawing Residency, hosted by artists Angie Brew and Emma Fält in the Finnish lakeside countryside. WELL offers a focused and supportive environment for artists, researchers, and creative practitioners interested in drawing and expanded drawing practices. The residency creates time and space for deep reflection, listening, and grounding, while encouraging dialogue, experimentation, and collective exchange. Each summer, the Fält family opens their land and studios in Nerohvirta Village near Iisalmi to a small group of international and local artists. Surrounded by forests and lakes, participants are invited to engage with their own creative practice while becoming part of a temporary community of drawing practitioners.

Residency Focus
The residency is centred around drawing as a practice that can expand into multiple disciplines and approaches. Participants are encouraged to explore both individual work and shared creative processes.

What we offer

  • Drawing and sound art workshops led by Anna & Emma Fält and Angela Brew
(Further workshop details will be announced during the spring.)
  • Opportunities to share and develop your artistic practice with fellow artists, researchers, and practitioners
  • Time and space for independent creative work
  • A small, supportive community of practitioners
  • Simple shared vegetarian meals
  • Daily access to nature: lake swimming, forest walks, and harvesting
  • A peaceful working environment in the Finnish countryside-


Participation Fee


The residency fee is 451.5 € (£390).
The fee covers the programme and shared meals and is kept as low as possible to cover basic costs.
Accommodation is not included in the residency fee. Participants may choose from:

  • A low-cost bedroom in the studio house
  • Local accommodation nearby
  • Camping in the surrounding area.

Who Can Apply

  • Applications are welcome from artists, creative practitioners, researchers, and makers whose work relates to drawing or expanded drawing practices.
  • The residency hosts a maximum of 7 participants, allowing for an intimate and focused working environment.

To apply,/register please send an email including:

  • A short introduction to your practice
  • A brief description of what you are currently working on
  • A few sentences on why participation in the WELL residency would be meaningful for you
  • Application deadline: April 20, 2026

Contact
For applications and questions regarding accommodation or the residency programme, please contact the organisers by email. We warmly welcome applications from practitioners interested in exploring drawing, nature, and shared creative practice in the Finnish landscape.



WELL International Drawing Residency


Hosted by Emma Fält & Angie Brew
brewdrawing@gmail.com
emmavilina@gmail.com

Fält & Fusco Surface Tension – exhibition

| Emma Fält

6.-23.6.2019

at Gallery Ars Libera

Welcome to the opening / avajaiset on Wednesday 5.6.2019 @ 18-20, Suokatu 30, 70110 Kuopio 

more info below / lisää alla

Fält-Fusco Surface tension 19

What is a dialogue? Can we have one that is real and successful between a human being and nature?

The work began with Fält’s attempts to open up a physical dialogue with Barents sea coast at Varanger fjord, especially with its inanimate parts like sand rocks and water. For a month she continued walking the same shoreline, the middle of Vadsø town, in northern Norway. These acts were transformed into drawn, written and recorded material for Fält and Fusco to continue working on with.

Listening to a non-verbal conversation is about intuitively interpreting someone else’s actions through our own body. Understanding implies figuring out the intention of the talker; communication needs a transformation from both sides. We went through computational and intuitive approaches to interpreting the collected images and sound, applying digital processes that analytically extract what matters in an image as well as analogue, tactile and materic transformations of images, understood and reinterpreted through the act of drawing.

As a result of multilayered conversations approaching the theme of dialogues between humans, human and nature, material and immaterial, verbal and non-verbal, the exhibition gathers together what has been found when we let our thoughts and work-in-progress open for the other person to respond to it. We reflected upon both the quantifiable and hard-to-grasp features of a conversation. For our research, we built up a laboratory of some kind to investigate the possibilities of multilingual dialogue, experimenting with physical properties, chemistry and alchemy.

What happens when and if we somehow manage to travel through the surface layer, and find what’s hidden in the depths of the other?

Fält & Fusco

Pintajännitys

6.-23.6.2019

Galleria Ars Libera

Mitä tarkoittaa dialogi? Voimmeko avata aidon, onnistuneen dialogin ihmisen ja muun luonnon välille?

Työprosessi alkoi Fältin matkoista Varanginvuonoon Barentsinmerelle. Siellä hän tutki dialogia ympäristön ja erityisesti sen elottomien osien, kuten hiekan, kivien ja veden kanssa. Joulukuun 2018 ajan Fält käveli Vesisaaren kaupungin arkista rantaviivaa yhä uudelleen keräten materiaalipankin, joka muodostuu valokuvista, piirroksista, kirjoituksista sekä kenttä-äänityksistä. Fält and Fusco ovat jatkaneet työtä yhdessä muokaten näiden tallenteiden sisältöä vuorotellen.

Non-verbaalisen keskustelun kuunteleminen on toisen aktien intuitiivista tulkintaa oman kehon kautta. Ymmärtäminen merkitsee, että pääsemme selville toisen tarkoitusperistä; onnistunut dialogi vaatii kaikilta osallistujilta kykyä muuttua. Me hyödynsimme keskustelussa toisaalta laskennallisia, toisaalta intuitiivisia lähestymistapoja. Digitaalisilla menetelmillä saatoimme tehdä tarkkaa analyysiä tutkimastamme kohteesta esimerkiksi valokuvan tai äänen pohjalta. Analogiset, taktiilit ja materiaaliset lähestymistavat taas auttoivat ymmärtämään ja uudelleen tulkitsemaan ja muokkaamaan tarkastelemaamme. Ne toimivat myös alussa lähtökohtana dialogissa ympäristön kanssa.

Näiden monikerroksisten ja kudelmaisten keskustelujen kautta olemme lähestyneet ihmisten, ihmisen ja muun luonnon, materiaalisen ja immateriaalisen, sekä verbaalisen ja nonverbaalisen välistä vuorovaikutusta. Lopputulemana nähdään näyttely, joka kokoaa yhteen, mitä olemme löytäneet avatessamme keskeneräisen työprosessin toiselle muokattavaksi. Pohdimme keskustelun, sekä mitattavia, että vaikeammin ymmärrettäviä ominaisuuksia. Monikielisen dialogin tutkimiseksi rakensimme laboratorion kaltaisen, jossa olemme saattaneet tarkkailla asioiden fyysisiä ominaisuuksia, kemiaa ja alkemiaa.

Mitä tapahtuu jos/kun me jollain tavoin onnistumme läpäisemään ulkokuoren? Kuinka matkustaa pintojen ja jännitteiden läpi, kohti toisen syvyyksiin piilotettua?

https://emmafalt.net

https://www.robertofusco.net

Työtä tukee Taiteen Edistämiskeskus (Taike)

 

SAD SWIPE TAP LIKE

| Emma Fält

SAD SWIPE TAP LIKE 

Live Drawing at night of the Arts in Helsinki part of ALIASING – exhibition at MUU gallery. http://www.muu.fi/site/?lang=fi

on Thursday 23.8. 19:30-

IMG_2461

Starting at 19.30, a live drawing performance by Emma Fält; a non-verbal dialogue with the kinetic structures of the Aliasing exhibition. Performer and visitors can participate using social media, a touch interface and their physical presence.

“I invited Emma to perform and live draw in the gallery space of MUU, acting as an agent of the ecosystem I built in the exhibition. I asked to move in relation with the mirror structure, thinking, focusing and building a dialogue with the transitory images reflected.As an outcome, the drawing of the performance will remain in the space and become part of the exhibition. I wish the installations will be extended by what she will be leaving,  less confined by their size, less of an object and more of a part of a continuous process.” ALIASING aka Roberto Pugliese

“I have thought about the ways we are touching and touched by each other through the social media. How does it feel like to be liked or bullied there? How does it feel when you are touching or being touched by someone virtually? How our identity and self-image are formed through these, almost random and sudden acts?

What I am drawing here is inspired by the movement material and gestures we use when operating with mobile devices, they way we touch equipment. Is that the way we want to touch each other?

With the live drawing created with and in the installation by Roberto Pugliese I am exploring and tracing  emotional processes, that we go through while navigating in the social media environments. It is my attempt to understand that ecosystem, finding my own place there, finding sense of control and possibilities to change the way it affects me.

The drawing is made both on physical and virtual canvases. The installation will be transformed by visitors that are reacting, posting and affecting the performer by their acts.” Emma Fält