Since 2024, Carla Tapparo has been an active member of civil search and rescue in the Mediterranean. Part of her training involved knot-making, taught by seafarers who generously shared their knowledge. In mathematical knot theory, the simplest knot is a circle known as the unknot. Circles are often used as metaphors for cyclical movements in nature, such as the passing of the seasons. A line, on the other hand, can be understood as a representation of linear and progressive time, associated with capitalism and colonialism.
Knots revealed themselves to the artist as a way of communing with time, bringing in the entanglements, simultaneity and asynchronous processes of space-time-matter. Deep oceanic time brings forward questions of the ocean’s autonomy, and how that is contested by human actions.
In Suomenlinna, Carla continues her exploration of time through knotting and splicing techniques, using ropes gifted by fishermen and rope-makers in the Åland Islands. She also engages with other time-keeping technologies, such as sea shanties and work songs.
About the Artist
Carla Tapparo (she/her) is a transdisciplinary artist currently based in Italy. She holds a Bachelor’s and a Professor’s degree in Fine Arts from Universidad Nacional de La Plata, Buenos Aires, Argentina, and a Master of Arts in the Public Sphere, summa cum laude, from édhèa, Switzerland, supported by the Hans Boerg Wyss Scholarship. Her work has been exhibited and performed in Argentina, Switzerland, Germany, and Ireland, and she has taken part in several international residency programmes, including Frankfurt Moves! (2022) and the Global Forest Residency in the Black Forest (2024).
She has also worked as Art Director for the children’s animation show Lihuén (Micelio Studio, Argentina), which aired on the national channel Paka Paka and received multiple awards in her home country. Through her involvement in LDSP open-source software, she has published papers and led workshops at conferences such as NIME and DAFx, as well as in non-academic settings, including the Hackn3t Residency by AKC Attack in Croatia.
Carla Tapparo’s stay at Residency B28 is co-funded by the European Union through the Creative Europe programme as part of the project Island Connect II.
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