Aistit / coming to our senses

b. 1982 in Somalia,

based in Helsinki, Finland

Abdulkarim is a social speaker, writer, and activist interested in themes relating to freedom. She participates actively in public discussion as a political commentator and a columnist.

She collaborates regularly with choreographer Sonya Lindfors and is a member of Miracle Workers Collective that represented Finland at the 58th Venice Biennale. Abdulkarim is also a  founding member of the Nordic Feminist Network, including policymakers from Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, and Sami regions. Abdulkarim’s and Eeva Talvitie’s book, About ten myths on feminism was published in Finnish in 2018. Her second book will be published in collaboration with photographer Uwa Iduozee. She made her debut as a screenwriter in the short film Dream Job produced by Tuffi Films.

Abdulkarim received the Minna Canth prize in 2019, awarded annually to a person shaking the Finnish society. She is a member of the Obama Foundation Network.

b. 1925 in Lebanon,

based in Paris, France

Adnan moves between different mediums; she is a poet, essayist, and visual artist, who was born and raised in Beirut. She studied philosophy at the Sorbonne, U.C. Berkeley, and at Harvard, and taught at Dominican College in San Rafael, California, from 1958–1972. In solidarity with the Algerian War of Independence (1954–1962), Adnan began to resist the political implications of writing in French and became a painter. Then, through her participation in the movement against the Vietnam War (1959–1975), she began to write poetry and became, in her words, an American poet. In 1972, she returned to Beirut and worked as cultural editor for two daily newspapers. Her novel Sitt Marie-Rose, published in Paris in 1977, won the France-Pays Arabes award and has been translated into more than ten languages. In 1980, Adnan re-established herself in California, making Sausalito her home. Since 2012 she has been based in Paris, France. Adnan is the author of more than a dozen books in English. In 2014, she was awarded one of France’s highest cultural honors: l’Ordre de Chevalier des Arts et Lettres.

Her paintings have been widely exhibited, including Documenta 13, the 2014 Whitney Biennial, CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, The New Museum, and Museum der Moderne Salzburg. In 2014, Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art mounted a retrospective of her work.

b. 1976 in Finland,

lives and works in Grankulla, Finland

Antas graduated from Goldsmiths College in London England in 2000, he lived in London for thirteen years until he was lured back to Finland for a three year residency at Pro Artibus. With a conceptual and philosophical approach Antas observes his surroundings, creating artwork in a multitude of different techniques. He treats the chosen material meticulously, emphasizing a meditative process of producing and experiencing art. Through his subject matter and a sensitivity of translating between different materials Antas examines our relationship to our natural world, our experience of nature, and our alienation of it.

To Antas most recent exhibitions include: Stories make worlds / Worlds make stories, Galleria Heino, Finland (2019); Heritage, The North Coast Art Triennale, Gribskov, Denmark (2019); End of the World in the Mysterious Forest, Triumph Gallery, Moscow (2017); Long Player, Sinne, Helsinki, Finland​ (2015). Antas’s works are in several public collections, including Kiasma, Contemporary Art Museum, Saastamoinen Foundation Art Collection, Wihuri Collection and Zabludowicz Collection.

b. 1942 in Syria,

based in Paris, France

Simone Fattal was raised in Lebanon, where she studied philosophy at the École des Lettres in Beirut. She then moved to Paris, where she continued her philosophical pursuits at the Sorbonne. In 1969 she returned to Beirut and began working as a visual artist, exhibiting her paintings locally until the start of the Lebanese Civil War. She fled Lebanon in 1980 and settled in California, where she founded the Post-Apollo Press, a publishing house dedicated to innovative and experimental literary work. In 1988 she enrolled in a course at the Art Institute of San Francisco, which prompted a return to her artistic practice and a newfound dedication to sculpture and found her connection with clay, a material deeply connected to the earth, which for Fattal is in the heart of creation in every mythology. The use of earth brought a human element to her work that is often born from her interest in ancient tales and her fascination with archeological finds which create direct associations to elements of time, memory and loss. But it is through her sculpting of the material by bare hands that she breeds life into these inanimate objects. The artwork encompasses a volatile presence that is simultaneously both fragile and brutal. They exist in a constant state of becoming or disappearing.

Fattal’s recent exhibitions include the Works and Days, MoMA PS1 (2019); Musée Yves Saint Laurent Marrakech (2018); the Rochechouart Departmental Museum of Contemporary Art (2017), and the Sharjah Art Foundation (2016).

b. 1974 in Finland,

based in New York City, USA

Haapoja’s work investigates the existential and political boundaries of the world. With a specific focus in encounters with nature, death and other species, she questions how different structures of exclusion and discrimination function as foundations for identity and culture. The notion of a world that is deeply rooted in the physicality and co-existence of beings and their multiple lifeworlds is at the core of Haapoja’s politically and ethically driven practice.

Haapoja approaches the previously mentioned themes by building up large projects, often realized in the forms of installations, related publications and participatory acts. Collaborations with author Laura Gustafsson under the name Gustafsson&Haapoja explores problems arising from the anthropocentric worldview.

Haapoja’s work has been exhibited widely. Her recent exhibitions include Helsinki Art Museum, Taipei Biennale, Venice Biennale, Momentum Biennale, Chronus Art Center Shanghai, Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art Helsinki, ZKM Germany, ISCP New York. Her work has been awarded ANTI Festival International Prize for Live Art (2016), Dukaatti prize (2008), and Säde -prize (2009). Gustafsson&Haapoja was awarded Finnish State Media Art Award in 2016, and Kiila-Prize for socially engaged art in 2013.

Haapoja has an MA degree from the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts and Theatre Academy. She is currently a member of the board of trustees of the Finnish Cultural Institute in New York. She was also a founding member and a chair of the board of Checkpoint Helsinki, a Helsinki-based art organisation now under the name PUBLICS.

b.1980 in California,

based in Berlin, Germany

Christine Sun Kim explores the conceptual aspect of sound by connecting it to acts of drawing, painting and performance. By combining aspects of musical notation, body language and American Sign Language (ASL) she expands the communicative potential of such information systems and in turn invents a grammatical structure for her own compositions. Kim uses a variety of media to provide critical commentary on translations between ASL and English, to deconstruct preconceived ideas around sound and language and interrogate how linguistic authority influences perception.

Selected exhibitions and performances have been held at: MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge (solo); Ghebaly, Los Angeles (solo); White Space, Beijing (solo); Carroll/Fletcher, London (solo); De Appel, Amsterdam (solo); Serralves Museum, Porto; Sound Live Tokyo; Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Berlin and Shanghai Biennials; Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and the Museum of Modern Art and MoMA PS1, New York. She is represented by François Ghebaly Gallery in Los Angeles and White Space Beijing in Beijing.

b. 1978 in Canada, based in Paris, France

Kapwani Kiwanga’s work often manifests as installations, sound, video, and performance. She intentionally confuses truth and fiction in order to unsettle hegemonic narratives and create spaces in which marginal discourse can flourish. As a trained anthropologist and social scientist, she occupies the role of a researcher in her projects.

Kiwanga studied Anthropology and Comparative Religion at McGill University, Canada. She followed post-graduate studies at École Nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris (France) and Le Fresnoy: National Contemporary Art Studio (France).

She received the Marcel Duchamp prize (FR) in 2020 and in 2018 the Frieze Artist Award (USA) as well as the Sobey Art Award (CA). Her film and video works have been nominated for two BAFTAs and have received awards at international film festivals.

She has exhibited internationally including Haus der Kunst, Munich (DE); Albertinum museum, Dresden (DE); MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge (USA); Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (USA); Esker Foundation, Calgary (CA); Power Plant, Toronto (CA); National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa (CA); Whitechapel Gallery, London (UK); Serpentine Galleries, London (UK); Yuz Museum, Shanghai (CHN); Centre Pompidou, Paris (FR) and Jeu de Paume, Paris (FR) among others.

She is represented by galerie Poggi, Paris; galerie Tanja Wagner, Berlin; Goodman gallery, Johannesburg, Cape Town & London.

b. 1996 in The Bahamas,

based in Chicago, IL

Knowles’ work invites through the archetypal & moves beyond as an incredibly specific expression of interspecies companionship. At once a seemingly private language, its monumental character reveals that the work is generated from primordial knowledge.

They garner strength from the formless, fluid movement of unbounded rhythm.

His poetics are epic in scale, with an intimate cadence that ebbs & flows in sub-realities. There’s a symbiosis of confessional narrative & emotional lyric, acting as a soft ground for a central figure of luminously erotic queer desire.

Romantic longing nourishes an empathic absorption into a space pulsating with aliveness. The aesthetics consistent resonance of humane & animal grief is redemptive. Through alchemy, there’s hope for rebirth as its ochre atmosphere breathes prenatal warmth & a givenness for meditations on ancient sentience.

This open & untethered vision of inter-being is more than a pollyannish dream of a beautiful ecology. The stakes of this cosmology are deep within solemn contemplation of what is nature, how does one maintain another’s quality of life & what capacity of being death doula allows for a way to die with dignity & grace.

Knowles received his MFA in Painting as a New Artist Society Award scholar in 2020 from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Exhibitions include Galerie Emanuel Layr (Vienna, Austria), Andrew Kreps (New York, NY), Vdrome (Milan, IT), Four Flags at Chicago Manuel Style (Chicago, IL), Soccer Club Club (Chicago, IL), The Green Gallery East (Milwaukee, WI), The National Art Gallery of The Bahamas (Nassau, Bahamas) & Popop Studios (Nassau, Bahamas).

(they/them)

b. 1980 in Finland,

based in Helsinki, Finland

I’m a non-binary performance artist, actor, and writer. In my art, work and everyday life, I try to take care of fragile structures and soft conditions. My thinking is based on intersectional transfeminism, and I try to actively trace where my knowledge/ignorance stems from, and from whom and with whom I have learned; I try to understand continuities of knowing. I try to understand the kinds of continuums I am part of. I try to be aware of my positions and privileges. I practice being a better ally to other marginalised people. I practice giving way and listening, and taking action. In my work I try to think of questions related to accessibility: who can take part in this performance, who can afford it, for whom is there space, for whom it might be safe to be here. I think about consent in every step of the process. I believe one can say no at any point, it is self-evident. That is important. I want to make space for sounds that are usually not listened to. I want to make space for ambiguities and impossibilities, obscurity and incomprehensibilities. I want to make space. I am interested in areas of dimness and the behinds of structures, miracles.

Kokko often works in collaboration with working groups they have convened. Regular important collaborators are sound designer Tari Doris, light designer Meri Ekola, performance artist and translator h m ouramo, dramaturge Even Minn and playwright E.L. Karhu. Their recent works include how to host something as a cloud created for Baltic Circle Festival, Helsinki; the performance Genderfuck – gender poetics, and a series of premieres Näyttely – Exhibition – Vino Potretti (“Queer Portrait”); Fragile Structures, part 1: Humming, premiered at the Turku New Performance festival. Their photographs and videos were seen at Titanik Gallery’s exhibition Between a rock and a hard place there is softness and Mänttä Art Festival. In 2021-2025 Kokko’s work is supported by a five-year artist grant from Arts Promotion Centre Finland.

b.1985 in Finland,

based in Helsinki, Finland

Lindfors is a choreographer, artistic director, facilitator and educator. She received a MA in choreography from the University of the Arts Helsinki in 2013. In the core of her work is the practice of shaking and challenging existing power structures and empowering communities.

Her time is divided between her own artistic work, educational work and working as the artistic director of UrbanApa; an inter-disciplinary and counter-hegemonic arts community that offers a platform for new discourses and feminist art practices. In all her positions she creates and facilitates anti-racist and feminist platforms, where a festival, a performance, a publication or a workshop can operate as the site of empowerment and radical collective dreaming.

Lindfors makes her own and collaborative works such as performances, curated programs and performative actions. Her works have been shown and supported by Beursschouwburg, Kampnagel, Spring Utrecht, CODA – festival, Black Box Theater Oslo, Zodiak – Centre for New Dance among others. She is a member of Miracle Workers Collective that represented Finland at the 58th Venice Biennale.

Lindfors has been awarded The Finnish State Art prize for Dance (together with Anniina Jääskeläinen) in 2013, and Anti Festival International Prize for Live Art in 2018.

b. 1974 in Finland,

based in Salo and Helsinki, Finland

Långström is a media artist and filmmaker. Her artistic work consists of films – short fiction and documentary – as well as cinematic installations, combining moving images with spatial elements. Her work processes tend to be extensive, well researched and interdisciplinary. Her work focuses on social perspectives on technologically mediated narratives and visual technologies, as well as certain political histories and their cinematic influences on the present. The intuitive experience and role of the viewer is a central aspect of her installations.

Långström’s work has been exhibited at museums such as Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art in Helsinki, Frankfurter Kunstverein and Nassauisher Kunstverein, and in galleries such as Interaccess Gallery in Toronto, Kunsthalle Lophem in Belgium, and Kunstfort Vijhusen in The Netherlands. She holds an MFA from the Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki (MFA), 2003, including exchange studies and practical training at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, USA. She has been artist-in-residence at London Space Studios, IASPIS (Nifca), Stockholm and FACT, Liverpool. She was granted the William Thuring award by the Finnish Art Society in 2017. The film The Other Side of Mars which she directed won the Testimony on Knowledge – award at the Jihlava International Documentary Film Festival in October 2019.

b.1982 in Finland,

based in Berlin, Germany

Dafna Maimon’s practice encompasses performance, video, and immersive installation. Her work surveys the ways in which we handle recollections, stereotypes, and traumatic experiences into narrative settings, while sketching out strategies of subversion and self-empowerment. In particular, her work deconstructs patriarchal structures and plays with them through exaggeration and re-contextualization. The study of diverse forms of community and belongingness is another characteristic of her practice; as is the realization of time-consuming and collaborative processes. Her humorous and often absurd work taps deep into the human narrative and its vessel; the human body, while looking for new perspectives and tools that allow for self-reflection, stillness and catharsis.

Maimon has shown her work in institutions and art spaces such as Kunst-Werke (Berlin), PS1 Moma (New York), Mahj Jewish Museum (Paris), Kim Center Contemporary Art, (Riga), SPACE Gallery, (Portland Maine), Gallery Wedding (Berlin) Maimon holds a BFA from the Gerrit Rietveld Academy and an MFA from the Sandberg Institute Amsterdam.

b. 1968, France

based in La Rochelle, France

Laurent Millet composes the chapters of an imaginary encyclopedia populated with objects made by himself, by photographing them in their natural settings or in his studio. His assemblies are hybrids of traditional, scientific, and architectural objects, including works of artists whose work he loves. Each of these constructions is an opportunity to question the status of the image itself: its history, its place, the physical phenomena associated with it, and its forms of appearance.

His works have been exhibited in the Museum of Fine Arts in Santa-Fe, in the Nicéphore Nièpce Museum (Chalon-sur-Saône, France), during the festival Rencontres Internationales de la Photographie in Arles, in the Hôtel des Arts in Toulon, in the gallery CGAI (La Coruña, Spain), during the festival Rencontres Photographiques de Lectoure, and in the Museum of Fine Arts in Angers. His work has been included into public and private collections both in France and in the United States, including the Chicago Art Institute, MOMA San Francisco, Houston Museum of Fine Arts, the Los Angeles County Museum, the National Contemporary Art Fund, the European House of Photography, the National Library, and the art libraries of Angers, Grenoble, La Rochelle, Lyon, Vitré, Pessac and Caen. Millet has also obtained the Higher National Diploma of Plastic Expression from the School of Fine Arts in Lorient. Nowadays, he teaches at the Higher School of Fine Arts in Angers. Millet was also a member of the school Casa de Velazquez from 2007 to 2009. He is represented by the Galerie Binome in Paris, and by Catherine Edelman Gallery in Chicago. In 2014 and 2015, he was awarded with The Nadar and Niepce Prizes.

b. 1979 in Finland, based in Helsinki, Finland &

b. 1981 in Finland, based in Helsinki, Finland

Maija Mustonen and Anna Maria Häkkinen have been working with questions arising from touch, senses, intimacy and care for over ten years, in different constellations. They are interested in slow and long-lasting soft practices based on sharing, nurturing, supporting, and transforming. Both are artists with a background in dance, and they have created numerous performative works for stage in the context of dance and live art. They have also been working in museums and artist-run galleries as well as working in site-responsive ways in a variety of spaces and situations.

Mustonen has a BA degree in dance from Laban Center in London, and an MA from fine arts from the Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki. She is also a curatorial member of Ehkä production / Kutomo in Turku. Häkkinen graduated with an MA in choreography from the University of the Arts Helsinki, where she often teaches workshops. Zodiak – Center for New Dance in Helsinki has co-produced several works by both artists.

b.1982 in Finland,

based in Espoo, Finland

Kalle Nio works in the borderline between magic, visual arts and cinema. In his stage performances and cinematic installations, he is an inventor, performer and a researcher creating encounters between past and the present, between magic and visual arts, between the high arts and the sideshows, between craft and technology, between real and illusions.

He often uses elements from 19th century stage magic as the starting point for his highly visual explorations of human body and human relationships in our society.

Nio has a master’s degree in fine arts from University of Arts Helsinki. With his performing arts group WHS he has performed in more than 30 different countries. His visual arts exhibitions, video installations and short films have been shown in museums and galleries in Finland and abroad. He is also one of the founders of Teatteri Union, an art-house cinema and performing arts venue in Helsinki.

b. 1978 in France,

based in Antwerp, Belgium

Laure Prouvost uses video, drawing, tapestry, ceramics, photography, performance, and above all, language to create her immersive installations which plunge the viewer into a journey of personal and collective introspection. Words, images, memories, the five senses, everything which appears tangible and reliable is challenged and inverted by the fantastical nature of the ambiguous narratives introduced by the artist.

In 2002, Prouvost received her BFA from Central St Martins, London and studied towards her MFA at Goldsmiths College, London. She also took part in the LUX Associate Programme. Solo exhibitions have been held at venues including  ‘AM-BIG-YOU-US LEGSICON’, M HKA – Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp, Belgium (2019) Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2018); BASS Museum, Miami (2018); SALT Galata, Istanbul (2017); Kunstmuseum Luzern (2016); Museum Für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt (2016); Red Brick Art Museum, Beijing (2016); Haus Der Kunst, Munich (2015); New Museum, New York (2014). In 2011 she was awarded the MaxMara Art Prize for Women and was the recipient of the Turner Prize in 2013. Prouvost represented France at the 58th Venice Biennale in 2019. The French Pavilion exhibition ‘Deep See Blue Surrounding You / Vois Ce Bleu Profond Te Fondre’ was subsequently on view at the Abattoirs in Toulouse and at the LaM – Lille Métropole Musée d’art moderne, d’art contemporain et d’art brut (2020).

b. 1983 in Senegal,

based in Berlin, Germany

Monira Al Qadiri is a Kuwaiti visual artist born in Senegal and educated in Japan. In 2010, she received a Ph.D. in inter-media art from Tokyo University of the Arts, where her research was focused on the aesthetics of sadness in the Middle-East stemming from poetry, music, art and religious practices. Her work explores unconventional gender identities, petro-cultures and their possible futures, as well as the legacies of corruption.

She has held solo exhibitions at Haus der Kunst, Munich (2020), Kunstverein Gottingen, Gottingen (2019), The CIRCL Pavilion, Amsterdam (2018), Sursock Museum, Beirut (2017), Gasworks, London (2017), Stroom Den Haag, the Hague (2017), and Sultan Gallery, Kuwait (2014). Her participation in collective exhibitions includes: “Our World is Burning” Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2020), “Theater of Operations: The Gulf Wars” MoMA PS1, New York (2019-20), Future Generation Art Prize, Kiev (2019), “Antikino” Berlinale Forum Expanded, Berlin (2019), Asia Pacific Triennial, Brisbane (2018), Lulea Biennial, Sweden (2018), Athens Biennial, Athens (2018), “Crude” Jameel Arts Center, Dubai (2018), among others.

b.1982 in Estonia,

based in Helsinki, Finland

Kati Roover is a multidisciplinary artist who approaches environmental changes through poetic imagination. Her works are often based on different ways of forming knowledge as well as the fleeting concept of a place in the midst of massive environmental changes. She creates works that combine her research with a broad range of perspectives, e.g. human-non-human interaction, natural sciences, ecological and decolonial thinking, deep listening, mythical storytelling, feminist new materialisms, and documentary essay film. She works with moving image, sound, photography, text and installations.

Roover received her Master of Fine Arts degree from the Academy of Fine Arts (University of the Arts Helsinki) in 2016. Her recent exhibitions include What is it like to be an animal?, Kunsthalle Seinäjoki (2020), Finland, Fragile Times, Galerie im Körnerpark, Berlin (2020) Coexistence, Contemporary Museum Kiasma, Helsinki, Finland (2019), And Tomorrow And exhibition in Index, Stockholm, Sweden (2018).

b. 1978 in Finland,

based in Stockholm, Sweden

Rosenström’s practice centres around installations that play with the viewer’s psychological and physical relationship within a specific moment and place. The works are often carefully produced in relation to the sites where they are experienced in. When creating these situations, he uses a wide variety of media and material; from the ephemeral yet tactile qualities of sound to architectural interventions. The presence of the viewer is integral in the work which often remains incomplete until it has been activated.

Rosenström studied in both the Malmö Art Academy (Sweden) and the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts, Helsinki, from where he received his MFA in 2007.

His recent group exhibitions include: Anatomy of Political Melancholy, Schwarz Foundation, Athens Conservatory, Greece (2019); Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More, 1st Riga International Biennial of Contemporary Art, Riga (2018); The Garden – End of Times, Beginning of Time, Aros Triennial, Århus, Denmark (2017); Theater of the Mind, Cranbrook Art Museum, Bloomsfield Hills, USA (2014). His solo exhibitions include No Land is an Island, Kuntsi, Museum of Modern Art in Vaasa, Finland (2019); a u g u s t, Helsinki Contemporary, Finland (2017). In 2010 Rosenström was  awarded with the Finnish Artists Associations Dukaatti Price and in 2020 Rosenström received the Finnish State Award Media Art Award.