350 square feet, open to the street 24 hours a day.
CPR² (pronounced CPR Square) was a project space in Williamsburg, Brooklyn — 350 square feet split into a small apartment and workspace in back and an exhibition space up front, its full glass storefront keeping the work inside visible to the street 24 hours a day. Born from an opportunity rather than a fixed calendar, it ran as both an artist residency and a venue for exhibitions and dialogue, built in partnership with regional and global organizations to support emerging artists and curators, with particular attention to underrepresented voices.
- Rut Karin ZettergrenJan–Feb 2023 · curated by Susanne Ewerlöf
- Nadine ByrneSep–Oct 2022 · curated by Erik Martinson
- Liv StrandApr–May 2022 · curated by Susanne Ewerlöf
- Märren / Windy Fur RundgrenJan 4–14, 2023 (performance Jan 12) · curated by Susanne Ewerlöf
Each edition was different — a new artist, a new curator, a new set of questions — but the storefront stayed constant: a small window onto the practice of an artist, open to the neighborhood at all hours.
An address in Buenos Aires, and someone who already lived there.
The Apartment was a residency in Buenos Aires built specifically for Nordic artists — a home base for living inside the city’s scene, not just visiting it. There was no open call: residents were invited, and once there, each was paired with a local host, a porteño, who ran them through a program of studio visits, presentations, and networking meetings meant to immerse them in the everyday life of the city and leave them with relationships that outlast the trip. Funding came from outside CPR, with CPR helping shape the applications.
- Anna Kinbom2022 · Helge Ax:son Johnsson’s Foundation & the Swedish Arts Grant Committee
- Petra Hultman2019 · IASPIS
What The Apartment offered wasn’t a studio or a deadline, but a way in: an actual address in Buenos Aires, and someone who already lived there to show an artist around.
A touring film program, built from a curator’s travels.
CPR Film Festival was a traveling film and video program, built by a curator in residence out of the artists they encountered during a research trip abroad, and screened for new audiences at partner venues and art fairs. Each edition centered on the cities that curator actually visited — at least two artists per city, a curatorial text linking the works to their regional context, a runtime capped at two and a half hours across no more than ten pieces.
- Closer to the Border (Más Cerca del Borde)2016 · arteBA, Buenos Aires
- The Earthbound2016 · Cannonball, Miami (w/ Art Basel Miami Beach)
Tainá Azeredo, working from her time in Estonia and Finland, built Closer to the Border, five films on the experience of crossing borders, featuring Jaan Toomik, Axel Straschnoy, Regina Parra, Marge Monko, and Minna Långström. That same year, curator Niekolaas Johannes Lekkerkerk built The Earthbound, a film program on humankind’s bond to the Earth and its ecosystems.
Each edition was different, shaped entirely by where its curator had been and who they met there — but every one existed to put those artists, and the questions raised by that place, in front of people who’d otherwise never encounter them.
A curator’s research, given a second life.
The CPR Exhibition Award funded a former resident curator to realize an exhibition of their own, selected by an honorary juror and built around the artists and ideas they encountered during their research trip. In 2017, it backed Nerea Ubieto — a Spanish curator — for Return Flight Ticket, selected by honorary juror Rirkrit Tiravanija. The exhibition began with a missed flight: Ubieto conceived the whole project after being stranded at the Helsinki airport, and built it around the idea of the plane as a place where identity dissolves. Four artists from her original research cohort — Jaan Toomik and Flo Kasearu from Estonia, Nestori Syrjälä and Anna Estarriola from Finland — took part in a micro-residency staged on the actual Helsinki–Madrid flights, rotating conversation partners every hour before the results were shown at Max Estrella Gallery in Madrid.
The Award existed to give a curator’s research a second life — not just a report on what they found, but a chance to put it in front of an audience.