Sunday June 15, 2025 | 1:00 – 4:00pm
*Please meet in front of the RU House on Governors Island at 1:00pm
Location: RU House at Colonels Row, Building #404B on Governors Island (map)
Ferry information | Video directions
Free Workshop
Limited to 8-10 participants, RSVP required
Paola Fernanda Guzmán Figueroa (2023 RU alum) is returning to New York in June at the occasion of her solo show “a detail is not a fragment” that opens at the Penumbra Foundation on June 5th (on view until August 5th).
At this occasion, RU has invited Paola to conduct a workshop on Governors Island dedicated to the learning of the cameraless technique of creating phytograms on 16mm black and white film. Participants will meet in front of the RU House on Governors Island at 1:00pm and explore the surrounding environment to gather naturally fallen leaves and plant materials. In a second phase, these elements will be employed via eco-friendly processes to imprint their textures and shapes directly onto the film surface. In conclusion, the results will be reviewed and projected on a 16mm projector, revealing the unique traces of the natural world in motion.
About
Paola Fernanda Guzmán Figueroa is a Colombian-Finnish visual artist and experimental filmmaker based in Finland since 2013. In 2023 her RU residency was supported by the Finnish Cultural Institute in New York. She works with analogue film, photography, and performance. Her work explores intergenerational memory, feminist narratives, and embodied archives, drawing on personal and collective experiences to reflect on identity, cultural displacement, and the body as a site of memory. She holds a BA and MA from the University of the Arts Helsinki, as well as a BA in Visual Arts from Pontificia Universidad Javeriana in Bogotá, Colombia.
This program is sponsored by the Finnish Cultural Foundation and Finnish Cultural Institute in New York.
