KinoSaito announced a partnership with Oolite Arts. The inaugural four-week onsite residency program hosted two Miami artists who were selected by Oolite Arts via a competitive application process. This year’s (2023) awardees are Christina Pettersson and Rose Marie Cromwell.

Born in Stockholm, Sweden, Christina Pettersson has lived in Miami, FL most of her life. Thus her last two solo exhibitions, in Everglades National Park and at the historic Deering Estate on Biscayne Bay, reflect her lifelong passions in her hometown.

Recent shows include the Perez Art Museum Miami (PAMM), Museum of Contemporary Art, Miami, Girls Club, Fort Lauderdale, the Art and Culture Center of Hollywood, FL, Launch F18, New York, NY. She has exhibited at other museums, particularly in the South, such as the Birmingham Museum of Art, AL, Columbus Museum of Art, GA, Baltimore Museum of Art, MD, Wiregrass Museum of Art, AL, and the Naples Museum of Art, FL. Her work is in major collections locally, such as the PAMM, Martin Z. Margulies at the Warehouse, Deborah & Dennis Scholl, Frances Bishop Good & David Horvitz, and throughout the country.

She has received the South Florida Cultural Consortium Fellowship thrice, the largest regionally sponsored grant in the US. She received a Fulbright Grant to return to Sweden in 2000, attending the Valand School of Fine Arts in Gothenburg.

She has attended residencies at Yaddo, Ucross, Vermont Studio Center, VCCA, The Studios of Key West, Atlantic Center for the Arts Master Program under Inka Essenhigh, and a year long program at the Deering Estate. Taking her to remote and historic places, they have a profound effect on her work. Most influentially she spent a month inside Everglades National Park under the AIRIE residency program in 2015. This residency solidified her desire to focus her artwork on the combination of her local environment, history and community outreach.

She has curated and staged group performances and public programming throughout her native South Florida. In conjunction with exhibitions and organizations such as AIRIE, Girls Club, and various historical entities she collaborates to bring these themes to life in the community- thru walking and bus tours of neighborhoods, cemeteries and the local environment, guest lectures, workshops, book clubs, even shadow puppet performances. These events have allowed Pettersson’s work to become a true engagement with the community, dissolving boundaries, utilizing the talents of a variety of people and organizations with limited resources, and educating and delighting by innovative means.