We welcome artists Sasha Rotts, Pavel Rotts and curator Sona Stepanyan for a research residency in August. Lucid Plexus is a study of forms of historical memory, through the lens of collective remembrance, personal testimony, and intergenerational narrative. Anchored in the experience of the Ingrian Finns, an ethnic minority inhabiting Russian territories since the 17th century, their project traces a lineage shaped by displacement, captivity, war, and systemic scarcity.
At its core, the project poses a fundamental question: how do we live with memory today? Should it be safeguarded in its static form, or allowed to weave itself into the living fabric of the now — unfolding, and vital, a form of evolving knowledge? The work proposes memory not as a sealed archive but as a dynamic, embodied knowledge: restless, intimate, and active.
Turning toward marginal and suppressed histories, Lucid Plexus approaches everyday objects as vessels of memory, silent witnesses to personal and collective experience. Here, art and artistic practice do not serve merely as instruments of preservation, but rather as means of attentive encounter with the past, acts of reactivation that illuminate obscured narratives into presence. In resistance to official narratives and their mechanisms of erasure, the project seeks to construct spaces where memory can remain unfinished, alive, and in motion.
Funded by the Kone Foundation, Finland.
Project route 2025-2028
- Finland – Lapland, Rovaniemi, Ivalo, Arctic Ocean Highway
- Norway – Finnmark, Kirkenes, Svaehold labour camp
- Hammerfest, Tjotta War Cemetery, Oslo
- Sweden – Helsingborg, Umeå, Gotland, Rejmyre
- Estonia – Narva, Hiiumaa, Tartu, Pärnu
- Latvia – Riga, Mazirbe Boat Cemetery
- Lithuania – Nida colony, Vilnius prison
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BIO
SASHAPASHA is a Helsinki-based artist duo founded in 2009 by interdisciplinary artists Sasha Rotts and Pavel Rotts. Their collaborative practice focuses on long-term, research-based projects that intersect and expand upon their individual artistic interests and methods.
Sasha Rotts (b. 1985) graduated as art historian from Stieglitz Academy and from Vapaa Taidekoulu (Free Art School). She received her BFA (2022) and MFA (2024) from the Academy of Fine Arts, Helsinki. Her practice is grounded in textile work, using stitching as both method and language to explore complex questions of memory, female labour, and the ecologies of labour. Rotts’ works are included in the collections of CCA Zarya (Vladivostok), Vyksa City Museum, Art re.Flex Gallery (St. Petersburg), Norilsk City Museum, and the Finnish Art Society.
Pavel Rotts (b. 1982) is a multidisciplinary artist working with various techniques and forms, such as site+specific installation, performance, moving image, artistic research and conceptual art. Pavel holds an MFA from the University of Arts Helsinki and previously studied at St.Petersburg Stieglitz State Academy of Art and Design, graduating from Pro Arte Institute in 2008. Rotts has participated in numerous international exhibitions, events, and concerts in collaboration with other artists, performers, and musicians.
Sona Stepanyan (b. 1987, Armenia) is a curator based in Stockholm, currently working with The Swedish Curators’ Association and as a freelancer. Her international curatorial practice emphasizes diverse artistic practices and in-depth, context-driven thinking through research, exhibitions, and public programming.