Circolo Scandinavo received Katy Gyllströms grant from Konstsamfundet in order to organise a residence for a Swedish-speaking-Finnish artist.
Laura Böök (b. 1986) is a Helsinki-based artist working with photography, moving image and text. In her work she mixes documentary starting points with staged or fictional elements. She often spends longer periods of time with the people she films or photographs to find a mutual trust and a nuanced way of portraying them, and has collaborated with researchers, activists and different communities.
Laura’s work has been shown in exhibitions in Finland and abroad. Her most recent solo exhibitions were held at Photographic Gallery Hippolyte in Helsinki, Celsius Projects in Malmö and Art Centre Mältinranta in Tampere, presenting The Group That Cannot Sing (2020), a video installation about a choir for unskilled singers. Her earlier works explore questions around migration, belonging and personal and collective memory. Laura Böök holds an MA in Photography from Aalto University of Arts, Design and Architecture in Helsinki, where she also studied Documentary Film, and a BA in Documentary Photography from University of Wales, Newport.
Laura first started working with Circolo Scandinavo in autumn 2021 as an artist in residence through the project Retake a Space, Reuse a Place. In the project, five artists from the Nordic countries collaborated with Stalker, the cultural project La Zattera and Scuola di urbanesimo nomade, mapping out unused spaces and hidden histories in different urban areas of Rome. From October to December 2022, Laura is working as an artist in residence in Napoli, supported by Konstsamfundet and the Katy Gyllström residency grant.