Maria Safronova Wahlström came to Vilnius to work with an artist Mindaugas Gapševičius on the project that questions boundaries of our empathy and possibilities to affect it with electricity. The awaited result – different pieces of clothing, that will make the energy we produce with our brains and bodies visible, heard, and felt by others.
“I am so delighted to be able to come to the residency in SODAS2123, especially in these days when any collaborative work that requires physical presence seems impossible. Ironically, speaking about empathy – it is a great help to meet in person and share working space if you want to understand each other and test ideas and materials. Our project ponders on two notions – electricity and empathy and how these seemingly very disconnected phenomena intertwine. We know that electricity has been used for different therapeutic purposes, to reduce depression, to soothe the pain and it has been proven to affect neurocognitive mechanisms that support empathy. It is very speculative, but in a way, electricity can be seen as a universal language that all things can speak and comprehend or physical phenomenon can be translated to.”
Maria Safronova Wahlström (Moscow, 1989) is an artist based in Gothenburg, Sweden. She got her MFA from Valand Academy and works with themes of collective identity and linguistic practices that we share. With an interest in our maintenance of social boundaries and issues of moral and ideological branding, she works with sculpture and installations as well as text, graphics and clothing design.
Follow our FB and Instagram accounts to stay tuned where it will lead and get to know more about upcoming events with Maria and Mindaugas.
The project/residency supported by Nordic Culture Point
Organized by Lithuanian Interdisciplinary Artists’ Association, in partnership with Institutio Media