SALT collective is a three headed collective and is currently establishing a land-sea relationship. Through various modes of exchange between the two spaces we realise a continuous body of artistic work. Between 2023-2026 we are operating around the globe with our satellite studio in the form of a sailboat. While one of us (Sandström) is navigating the studio, the other two members (Heikinheimo & Grass) stay on land. The material collected from and around the transnational locations are the base for our collective’s practice.
Our works exist within a transformative cycle and show stories of origins, ongoing relationships and entangled ways of being that, simultaneously provide and destroy, grow and dissolve. The media used range from photography to installation, and collectively question how transformation can be documented.
SALT’s members Jaakko Heikinheimo & Myriam Gras are present at Cove Residency, while Niklas Sandström is currently located at the Pacific.
Jaakko HEIKINHEIMO (Master of Arts, Master of Architecture) is a Finnish multidisciplinary artist and architect.
As an artist, Heikinheimo’s work encompasses a wide range of mediums, including sculpting, photography, and installation art. His approach has been lately deeply rooted in the concept of recontextualization – the act of imbuing materials and objects with new meaning by altering their original context. This fascination with recontextualization might stem from his childhood experiences in the Finnish nature and Paris’s urban spaces where he would collect discarded artifacts from the streets and woods, giving them a newfound significance and narrative.
Heikinheimo has spent a decade in France and more or less the rest of his life in Finland, from where he’s coming from.
Heikinheimo recent solo exhibition “En dessous” (engl. underneath) was in Musée Karo, Benin, West Africa in January 2024.
The exhibition, consisting of 300 photos,a few installations and interviews. Heikinheimo explored the subjects of the unseen and unknown world below us. The exhibition questions the mundane thoughts of the imperceptibility, cultural heritage and notions of the eternal demise.
Heikinheimo is increasingly engaged in the notions of curating and selection. Dating from 2017 he has been exploring the realm of postal art, examining themes of ownership and human connection through projects like “Post to myself, 2017” and “Write Me a Love Letter, Send Me Anything, 2022-.” The latter is a collection of letters and postcards gotten from previous unknown people, all over the world.
Currently Heikinheimo works as a Curator And Communication manager at the Finnish Cultural Institute of West Africa.
Myriam GRAS is a Dutch multidisciplinary artist and curator based in Helsinki, Finland. Her practice focuses on site-specific relationships and infrastructures, including ecological change, labour-driven production systems and transnational narratives. By implementing a multitude of perspectives in the work, Gras researches the way we perceive, engage and interact with the space surrounding us.
Through its entanglement in different temporal and geographical settings, the work becomes the carrier of a transformative moment that taps into different knowledge systems, aiming to transcend specific domain-related knowledge and vocabulary.
Gras’ practice is rooted in factual information, transporting it into the realm of the imagination through a multitude of media and formats. It includes moving image and photography, sculpture and installation, as well as curatorial activities and collaborations as research methods. Currently, Gras is working with French filmmaker Cyane Findji on the documentary film ‘Flowers of the Glacier’, taking place at the Tarfala Research Station in Arctic Sweden. Set against the backdrop of a receding glacier, it follows a team of researchers carrying out an expedition inspired by the discovery of a herbarium dating back to 1960.
Niklas SANDSTRÖM’s practice features familiar elements relating to the sea and is often presented in an unconventional way, as dimensions, compositions and conceptual ideas are played with, leaving room for the viewer’s interpretation. Until recently, Sandtröm observed the ocean’s tide and its constant ebb and flow gently but confidently altering the shoreline. Being in various seas and oceans, the encountered flows are providing a different perspective to both his subjective relationship to the sea and a more objective understanding of it as a quintessential element in human existence.
Image, above Jaakko Heikinheimo; below, Myriam Gras
