Current Residents Renata Asanova
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Renata Asanova, Roslynostvorinnya(Plantcreatures), detail, 2026, photo by the artist
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Renata Asanova, Kvitkostvorinnia(Flowercreatures), installation view, 2025
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Renata Asanova, Memory Grows, installation view, 2025, photo Katya Lesiv
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Renata Asanova, Kvitkostvorinnia(Flowercreatures), installation view, 2025, photo Katya Lesiv
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Renata Asanova, Kvitkostvorinnia(Flowercreatures), installation view, 2025, photo Katya Lesiv
Renata Asanova is a Ukrainian artist of Crimean Tatar origin whose practice explores memory, displacement, and identity. She works in painting, drawing, and ceramics, engaging with her heritage through imagined inner landscapes shaped by loss, longing, and belonging. Her projects explore memory as evolving rather than fixed, combining intuitive processes with symbolic and biomorphic forms that evoke fragility, protection, and transformation. Asanova investigates how identity can be reconstructed through material and image. Her work has developed through independent practice and international residencies, creating a dialogue between personal and collective histories.
During my USRP residency, I plan to work primarily with black clay, creating new organisms and experimenting with forms that emerge intuitively. I will allow the material to guide me, observing how shapes grow, transform, and acquire life through the process. I am interested in exploring how a calm, safe, and natural environment influences my practice, in contrast to the exhaustion and tension I carry from ongoing war in my country. I may also paint, responding to this new state. I want to discover how my ceramic works can inhabit and interact with nature, creating fragile yet resilient new worlds.
Renata Asanova’s residency at Värtsilä Art House is realised in the context of the Ukraine Solidarity Residencies Programme. The current partners of the programme are AARK, Art Centre Salmela, Fairres, Goethe-Institut Finnland, HIAP – Helsinki International Artist Programme, Nelimarkka Museum, Pro Artibus, The Finnish Darkroom Association, The Finnish Illustration Association Kuvittajat, Vantaa Artist Association, and Värtsilä Art House Residency. The continuation of the programme is possible due to the support of the Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture and Nordic Culture Point. This residency is supported by Vantaa Artist Association, and the Ukraine Solidarity Residencies Programme.