Tinja Ruusuvuori is an international artist currently in her Second Year Fellowship at the Fine Arts Work Center (FAWC), Provincetown, a renowned residency with seven months of uninterrupted time, housing, studio and a stipend. Her first year as a Fellow, 2022-2023, had the joys and complexities of being in a new place. Returning this past October for another seven months, she found herself in a different scenario. “I had friends, knew the town, people recognized me on the main street and said, ‘Welcome home!’”
Born in Tampere, Finland’s third-largest city, Ruusuvuori grew up on a small island with 40 residents, part of an archipelago boasting 40,000 islands and skerries. Living in Provincetown, which is surrounded on three sides by water, is familiar to her with the presence of the sea.
As a filmmaker (her work has been shown at the Visions du Réel, Toronto Hot Docs, and Camden International film festivals) and visual artist, Ruusuvuori, who holds a fine art MA from the Glasgow School of Art and a BA in documentary film from Aalto University, Helsinki, navigates various mediums.
Ruusuvuori is currently working on an experimental project that she calls “radio of uncertainty,” an analog and collective neighborhood radio station. “When you scroll through the FM dial and hear the sounds of ocean waves and whale songs blending with the crackle of radio static, you know the program is about to begin,” she said. “The station doesn’t have a set name or airtime. Radio, as a medium, is very ephemeral, happening in the now. And now, in times of uncertainty, we are trying to view confusion as a gateway to curiosity.”
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