Saskia Edens on residency at KYTA 2019
Residencies stimulate creative and mutual exchange between artists.
Pro Helvetia offers three months’ studio residencies and research residencies where artists are encouraged to develop their practice in a climate of cultural diversity.
Switzerland based artist Saskia Edens has been awarded a residency at KYTA 2019. An experimental residency program, the KYTA (Karma Yatri Travel and Art) is currently based in two rural locations – Kalga in the Himalayas and Stok in Ladakh. The focus of the residency is to research and explore the relationship between travel, living, culture,community,art and expression.The artistic focus is on the process and the confluence of various artistic practices across experimental human endeavour. The 6th edition will be hosted in Stok from September to October 2019. The residency will end with a four day showcase from 17-20 uniting the local creative community in Ladakh.
Saskia Edens
(c) Sarah Gerats
Saskia Edens is an artist based in Basel, Switzerland. She graduated from the Ecole Superieure des Beaux-Arts and the Ecole des Arts Décoratifs in Geneva.
Edens’ work involves video, painting, molten metal, casting techniques and performances, as well as elements such as fire/heat, water in its various states, earth/clay and breath. What prevails and underlies these different disciplines is energy, gesture, time and what allows changing aggregate states. Ice becomes water, metal solidifies, heat causes metamorphoses. In her search for fundamental insights, the artist poses questions about matter, but also about the manifestations of culture. Using experimental and archaic methods, she explores the essence of the living, which is reflected in the physical elementary, but also in the beginnings of cultural history. As a means of visualization, she takes up scientific methods and procedures of imaging, which transform the energy of the performative body into images. In many of Edens’ works, the body energy is the catalyst for processes of transformation.
