Essi Kausalainen performing in Every house has a door company’s performance “Broken Aquarium” at Chicago Performs, the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA), Chicago, in September 2024. Kausalainen’s travel was supported by Frame. Photo: Ricardo Adame / MCA Chicago.
In her blog, Grants Coordinator Veera Lizé looks into the geographical scope of international art projects supported by Frame. In a time of diminishing resources, geopolitical turbulence, and diverse needs, it is worth asking, what kind of international activities are most relevant to support in the contemporary art field.
Earlier this year, we organised Frame’s traditional grantees’ breakfast at our office. Every year, we invite artists and other art professionals to gather with colleagues to exchange experiences on their international projects.
This time, we wanted to discuss geography in particular. Tracking the destinations and locations of the applied Frame grants gives us a glimpse of where artists have created connections, and where they seek to travel. We also looked back at our statistics, to explore if we can see any broader shifts in the locations of the grant projects.
As the forms of contemporary art, the art world is in constant shift. For a long time, but exceedingly in recent years, biennials and events located outside the traditional western “art capitals” – such as Gwangju, Sharjah, Dakar, or São Paulo – have gained more and more interest and attention, broadening perspectives and discourses. In recent years, Frame has also aimed to widen our geographical and cultural scope in our programming, such as inviting curators to Finland.
Still, the vast majority of grant applications that Frame receives concern exhibitions and events in Europe. In 2023, for example, 84% of grant applications concerned events in Europe and the percentage of awarded grants was almost as high: 82%. A closer look at the destinations revealed, perhaps without surprise, Germany, the USA, Sweden, and the UK as the top destinations in the last two years. In 2023, 6% percent of the received grant applications concerned North America. However, 11% of the awarded grant projects happened there, meaning that projects in North America (and a vast majority of them in the USA) succeeded more often in getting funding.
The year 2024 saw an increase in projects in Asia: 10% of the Frame-funded grant projects took place there – as many as in North America. The year before, only 3% of the awarded grants were directed to projects in Asia. Africa, South America, and Oceania, each hosted only 1–3% of the events funded with Frame grants 2023–2024, which corresponded to the number of applications.
Indeed, Frame’s grant statistics showed slight changes in the project destinations, but whether it is a permanent shift or coincidence is harder to track. Frame receives over 600 grant applications each year and awards around 160 grants. Sometimes a big group exhibition or a biennial with multiple participants from Finland can raise statistics for a certain year. It is worth asking what are the preconditions, besides our remote location, that create and steer artists’ travelling and networking opportunities.
Step by step towards lasting connections
The big question on our desks is what kind of support is needed before the artist gets an international exhibition invitation or project proposal? Before one applies for a Frame grant, a long path of initial steps has already been taken.
In the breakfast event, Frame’s CEO Juha Huuskonen reminded the history of Frame. Initially, the role of Frame – when it was still called FRAME – Finnish Fund for Art Exchange (1992–2011) – comes from the nineties, when mobility started to boom in the art world. The role of an organisation like Frame was very different from today when operating internationally is a profound part of artists’ working practices. For Frame, supporting traveling and exhibiting abroad is still very important, but the routes of how artists create connections and end up working internationally are, fortunately, a lot more varied. Also, sustainability questions and geopolitical crises challenge the idea of mobility.
We recognise that artists need steady and long-term support to build their international careers and connections. It’s also important to highlight that international operations are not directed one way, but need nurturing both in Finland and abroad. We cannot blame weak funding for everything, but it’s clear that building international relationships requires resources. In the last 10 years, Frame’s grant funding from the Ministry of Education of Culture has been cut from 450,000 to 260,000, and further this year to a meager 167,000 euros. In this challenging situation, we need collaboration more than ever. Grants, residency opportunities, galleries, arts education, museums, and institutional support are all part of the same ecosystem. We should all participate in building lasting relationships and opportunities for international presentations.
Frame funds artists to exhibit and perform internationally, potentially anywhere in the world. For a few hundred euros you can travel to open an exhibition in a nearby Nordic or Baltic country, but transporting art and traveling is more expensive the further you travel. This requires strategic choices also from Frame, since supporting just a few such projects will eat up a large part of the available grant funding.
Paving the way for different art forms
A discussion among the grantees was about how to establish long-term relationships with specific locations or destinations. When getting an exhibition invitation, sometimes artists have an existing connection with the destination country or local actors, but this is not nearly always the case.
The question also relates to what exhibiting internationally means for different mediums. For example, socially engaged or process-based artistic practices would benefit from, or require, a working period in the local context preceding the actual presentation of the work. This is not always something that the inviting organisation can cover, and Frame’s grants currently cannot be used as working grants. And even if you would prefer more research or time for installing a site-specific work, if this is not offered, what can an artist afford to say no to? Then again in some art forms, it is not always the artist who travels, but only their works.
How can we balance between supporting continuity and long-term networks, and more one-off presentations, which still are very meaningful for the artist in question? Both can lead to impactful results that cannot fully be predicted.
During the discussion, many artists highlighted a need for different types of funding, such as one allowing more research-based and time-consuming traveling and the other for presenting the outcome such as an exhibition. A common wish from the grantees was prolonged engagement from the exhibiting institutions to support artists not only in practical matters but also to allow them to familiarise themselves with the local contexts.
For many, assistance and careful project management help to prepare and reduce stress when getting ready for an international project. For example, safety issues or weather conditions can be on the artist’s mind when traveling. Working in different kinds of locations can cause many surprises. One artist mentioned that they had to completely change the work once arriving at the site since it was completely different from what was expected. Artists are masters of creativity and flexibility, but understandably these situations create challenges. It is fair to ask, what is the funder’s or inviting organisation’s responsibility in providing assistance in these situations.
Still, as one of the Frame grantees put it: “If something goes wrong it’s still perfect. There’s a possibility of experimenting and failing, and failing might be the best thing that happened to you.”
– Veera Lizé, Grants Coordinator
This blog is a platform for reflecting work, current issues and discussions in arts by Frame staff members and other contributors. This blog post is published in Finnish and English.