Anna Karima Wane and Lotta Hurnanen selected as grantees for Jan van Eyck Academie and LIFT alumni residencies
The visual artists for the Liaison of Independent Filmmakers of Toronto (LIFT) alumni residency in autumn 2025 and the Jan van Eyck Academie alumni residency in Maastricht in 2026 have been selected.
Together with the Saastamoinen Foundation, Uniarts Helsinki’s Academy of Fine Arts support international opportunities for its alumni and their career advancement as visual artists in the form of residency grants. The support for the Jan van Eyck Academie 11-month residency programme is 76 600 €, while the support for the LIFT 3-month residency programme is 12 300 €.
Each year an international expert jury with yearly changing compositions pre-selects grant applicants out of the Academy of Fine Arts alumni, after which the residency centres then make the final selections.
Anna Karima Wane, a visual artist who graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in 2024, works with video, experimental documentary, and social practice. She has been selected for an 11-month residency at the Jan van Eyck Academie in Maastricht, starting in January 2026. The Jan van Eyck Academie is one of Europe’s most renowned international residency centers focused on postgraduate studies, with approximately 45 artists, designers, researchers, writers, and curators working in its programme every year.
Evaluation panel for Jan van Eyck Academie residency applications 2025:
- Onome Ekeh, visual artist, writer
- Luísa Santos, curator, researcher
- Hanna Johansson, professor, research of contemporary art.
The pre-selection panel described Wane’s application as follows:
“This artist and their interest in displacement and reconstructive memory could benefit from the resources Jan van Eyck has to offer. The inverse is also true, they are a global citizen with a penchant for community building and collaborative work. Their work is also striking and poses material conundrums.”
Visual artist Lotta Hurnanen, who works with experimental film and also graduated from the Academy in 2024, has been selected for the LIFT residency programme. The three-month residency in Canada will begin in the fall of 2025. LIFT is an artist-run media arts production and education organisation with a particular expertise in moving images.
The pre-selection panel described Hurnanen’s application as follows:
“This is a very strong application with a clear focus and intention for the residency. The project is driven by an exploratory approach to film chemistry and microbial expression. With a background in gardening, the applicant has a strong connection to landscape and materiality, which she wishes to interrogate further by understanding different photochemical processes. The residency at LIFT could help the applicant to realise the ambition of the proposed project. There is also the potential for this artist to forge connections between analogue film communities in Finland and Canada.”
Evaluation panel for LIFT Residency applications 2025:
- Kim Knowles, academic, curator, United Kingdom
- Daniel A. Swarthnas, artist, curator, Belgium
- Maija Timonen, writer, artist, Finland
Uniarts Helsinki’s Academy of Fine Arts has five residency partners. Alumni also have the chance to apply for a residency grant at Rijksakademie van beldeende kunsten in Amsterdam. The LIFT alumni residency was available for application in February 2025, while the Jan van Eyck Academie alumni residency was open for application from 10 March –10 April 2025. The application period for the “Ecologies in the making: Sculpting Futures” residency in Scotland and the ISCP residency in New York will open in autumn 2025. The application period for the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten residency closes in October each year.