Teaching period: 20–30 April 2026 (+ online meeting tbc)
Location: Academy of Fine Arts, Uniarts Helsinki, Finland
Teacher(s): Slavs & Tatars collective, Stan de Natris
ECTS: 4 ECTS
Number of available places for KUNO students: 6
Level: BA / MA
Application deadline: 27 February 2026
Requirements: Basic knowledge of screen printing is desirable, but alternative printing methods are also possible based on independent practice. Students interested in books and printed ephemera, Eurasian culture, performance, philology, tea, translation, crafts, and poetry are especially welcome to apply.
How to apply: Please fill in the online form and include a motivation letter: LINK to form
Course description:
Slavs and Tatars – Pattern Patina: The second part of a 2025-2026 Guest Professorship in Printmaking, the Spring course—part seminar, part workshop—will take place during an intensive two week period from 20th–30th of April.
We will explore material and conceptual approaches to pattern making as this forms in many artworks the basis of Slavs and Tatars’s creative output. Think of MERCZbau merchandise, tilled poster walls and scenography furniture coverings. We will look at inspiring artists and designers, explore their modes of production and the history of pattern making from early 20th century to contemporary examples.
Students will work guided by Slavs and Tatars’s designer (Stan de Natris) on their own pattern artworks in the silkscreen workshop, with a view to exhibit the students’ work at the end of the seminar on the 30th of April. Next to individual prints for the exhibition, a collective booklet will be designed. The publications from both workshops (October & April) will be presented during the opening of the exhibition.
In addition to a public lecture (Look Book) on the printed matter oeuvre of Slavs and Tatars, there will be additional presentations during the course of the seminar about historical examples of pattern making. There will also be a few field trips planned. We’re planning to go to the printing facilities of Marimekko, to learn about pattern making for print (and fashion). Additional trips include Alvar & Aino Aalto’s Home & Workshop (a full site visit program is in the making and may also include the Didrichsen Museum).
Before the Spring session in the print workshop in Helsinki, there will be an online meeting that gathers all the participants of the course, the new ones, as well as those who met in the October seminar in Helsinki. The exact date for this will be announced later.
The class will consist of approx 12 students: those interested in print and its whole scope, from posters to ephemera, and textile prints to pattern weaving, are welcome to apply.
Artists:
Maija Sofia Isola, Vuokko Nurmesniemi (Marimekko), Varvara Stepanova, Otti Berger, Alexander Girard, Saule Dyussenbina, Matt Mullican, AA Bronson (General Idea), Ferdinand Kriwet, Victor & Claire Vasarely, Josef & Anni Albers, Jean Dubuffet, Memphis (Ettore Sottsass, Nathalie Du Pasquier), Josef Hoffmann (Wiener Werkstaette), Alvar & Aino Aalto
Books:
Hamja Ahsan, Shy Radicals: The Antisystemic Politics of the Militant Introvert
Dib, El Janaby, El Juridy, Hadi, Lariby, Younis, Manifesto of the Arab Surrealist Movement (1975)
Graham, Beyond the Written Word: Oral aspects of Scripture in the History of Religion
Henri Lefevre, The Production of Space
Saba Mahmood, “Religious Reason and Secular Affect: An Incommensurable Divide?”
Siah Armajani: Walk this Line, ed Victoria Sung and Claire Davies, Walker Art Center, 2018
Rima Vesely-Flad, Black Buddhists and the Black Radical Tradition, NYU Press: 2022
Viktor Shklovsky, Turksib
Karen Brodine, Woman Sitting at the Machine Thinking
MMS, The Natural Enemies of Books: A Messy History of Women in Printing
Reza Negarastani, Cyclonopedia
David Melnick, Men in Aïda (Translations of the Iliad)
Mots d’Heure Grousse Reims (Nursery Rhymes Homophonically Translated into French)
Financial support by KUNO:
Travel support between countries: 330 € (except 660 € to/from Iceland)
Subsistence: 250 € per week (5-7 days), 100€ per second week.
General KUNO Eligibility Rules:
- only BA and MA full-degree students from the KUNO network schools can participate;
-exchange students from other institutions, which do not belong to the KUNO network, studying at one of the KUNO network schools, CANNOT participate;
- full-degree students from the KUNO network schools, currently on exchange at another institution, CANNOT participate (neither with nor without the KUNO grant).
Further information on the course content: annu.vertanen@uniarts.fi
Further information on applying and practical matters: kuva.international@uniarts.fi
