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 technologically, as well as the impact of electricity on health strategies.

“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, or to soothe the pain. It is very speculative, but in a way, electricity can be seen as a universal language that all things can speak and comprehend or chemical and physical processes can be translated to. The electromagnetic waves produced by the brain activity of one person and sent to a different person’s brain will affect their mutual understanding and emotional states.”

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.

Residency supported by Nordic Culture Point

Organized by Lithuanian Interdisciplinary Artists’ Association, in partnership with Institutio Media