Frame announces the 10 selectees for the Finland-Russia Curatorial Exchange Programme: Jetta Huttunen, Pauliina Kaasalainen, Anastasia Kamenskaya, Anastasiya Kotyleva, Christine Langinauer, Mirjami Schuppert, Andrey Shabanov, Arina Sherstiuk, Olga Shirikostup, and Sakari Tervo.
Curators were selected through an open call in April.
In collaboration with the Northwestern branch of the Pushkin State Museum (NCCA St. Petersburg) and the Finnish Institute in St. Petersburg, the project aims to establish new partnerships between curators, cultural workers, institutions and artists in Russia and Finland.
The Finland–Russia Curatorial Exchange Programme is supported by the Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture’s Russia programme in art and culture.
Curators living in Russia
Anastasia Kamenskaya (1988, Tver, Russia) received her master’s degree in cultural studies and is an artist, independent curator, and eco-activist. She works with community art, inclusive practices, participatory, environmental, and socially engaged art. “I love participatory practices and to work with the “non-professional”—believing everyone is an artist and can think critically and creatively. Because of working in participatory and community art, I don’t understand the separation between artist and curator. Additionally, I always try to make sure that my works and exhibitions leave a minimal ecological footprint.”
Anastasiya Kotyleva (1988, Syktyvkar, Russia) is an art historian and curator based in Saint-Petersburg. She currently works as an archivist and researcher at the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art. She has curated several projects devoted to the history of local art methods and has worked a lot with young contemporary artists. In collaboration with Natalya Shapkina, she organised a program of exhibitions for the cultural centre Zero +, which focussed on children as the audience. “The historical experience that I study and systematise guides my current research into the cultural shifts since the time of Perestroika (when local art opened for international viewership).”
Andrey Shabanov (1979, St.Petersburg, Russia) trained as an art historian (MA, EUSP, 2004; PhD, the Courtauld, 2013) and combines curatorial work in contemporary arts with academic research. He began his curatorial practice in the early 2000s with the Sergey Kuryokhin International Festival for Contemporary Art. His first independent initiative was the multidisciplinary research-based project Paradigm the North (2005-6). Between 2013 and 2017, Andy produced and curated five seasons of the site-specific project Local Library Window: Contemporary Art About Everyone for Everyone. From November 2017 to April 2021, he was the principal curator of WöD Grafik Kabinett, which promoted young Russian contemporary graphic art.
Arina Sherstiuk (1999, Kaliningrad, Russia) is a curator, photographer, and art manager who cooperates with local artists and galleries. In addition, Sherstiuk’s independent research is inspired by exploring alternative scientific activities within urban space and collects a range of cultural artefacts for her continuing artistic ideas and expression. Today, her explorations focus on the urban environment. Building facades, street art, signs, symbols, and colour forms become new ways of decoding and rethinking the city’s identity through its visual semiotic patterns.
Olga Shirikostup (1988, Severomorsk, Russia) is a curator and designer of educational and interdisciplinary projects in the contemporary art field. She curated The Art of Action course at the Cascade School for teens. She is a visiting lecturer at The Faculty of Communications, Media and Design at HSE University and for the master’s program Practices of Contemporary Art and Curatorship at the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art (in partnership with HSE). From 2014 to 2019, she coordinated the SKVT program for teenagers at the Polytechnic Museum. In 2021 she became chief curator at the Radiance Center for Contemporary Art.
Curators living in Finland
Jetta Huttunen (1967, Northern Finland) is a cultural producer and curator, specialised in art event production and media art. An expert in residency programs, her focus has been centered on artist-in-community activities and socially engaged art. Her interests and competencies also include resource-wise cultural production and climate-conscious art activities. Huttunen completed her PhD in 2020, which investigated participation within media culture. “Participation alters the experience of the artist, art producer, and audience. Conceptually, participation should include non-human practices, incorporating the non-human world and the environment into art production itself. This might thoroughly change the whole concept of art production in the future.”
Pauliina Kaasalainen (1981, Joensuu, Finland) is the chief curator of exhibitions at Joensuu Art Museum. As a curator, she is fascinated with site-specificity and the different perspectives formed through the dialogue between exhibition sites’ historical and sociocultural function and the art objects or ideas attached to them. In addition, she is intrigued by the relationships between older collection pieces and contemporary works in museums and public spaces. “I am also interested in art forms that utilise humour and comic elements to distance or emphasise complex subject matter.”
Christine Langinauer (1981, Helsinki, Finland) is a curator, writer and researcher. She is focused on situational knowledge, feminist and norm-critical thinking and has published several articles on contemporary art. Currently, she is working as an exhibition curator at the Vantaa Art Museum Artsi. Previously, Langinauer worked at Culture for All, promoting accessibility and diversity in the arts and was the acting Executive Director of the Pro Artibus Art Foundation from 2014-2015. Langinauer holds an MA in Art Theory, Criticism, and Management from the University of Helsinki and a postgraduate degree in curating from CuratorLab at Konstfack in Stockholm.
Mirjami Schuppert (1980, Ikaalinen, Finland) is a curator, and director of Titanik Gallery and Arte Artists’ Association in Turku. In 2016 she completed a practice-based PhD in curating at Ulster University. Since 2010, she has been working as an independent curator delivering numerous exhibitions in Finland, Germany, and Northern Ireland, at both galleries and museums. The focus of Schuppert’s curatorial practice is commissioning new context and site-specific works. Her studies in Cultural History (BA and MA) have significantly impacted her practice. “My current research and practice is focused on the questions of ethics and curating.”
Sakari Tervo (1985, Helsinki, Finland) currently works as the lecturer of exhibition studies at the Academy of Fine Arts, Uniarts. Tervo has done independent curatorial work with a series of online publications and has been an active member of the artist-run spaces Sorbus in Helsinki and Titanik in Turku. “I’m interested in collaborative processes and rethinking the concepts ‘alternative’ and ‘experimental’, as I feel these notions are easily subordinated to the so-called mainstream practices. I am motivated in questioning and parasitising dominant conventions to find new, diverse approaches for artistic work. For me, art is a social weave where other possible worlds exist.”