Venice Biennale 2024

Artists Pia Lindman, Vidha Saumya and Jenni-Juulia Wallinheimo-Heimonen have been selected to exhibit in the Pavilion of Finland at the 60th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia in 2024. The exhibition is curated by Yvonne Billimore and Jussi Koitela and commissioned and produced by Frame Contemporary Art Finland.

The exhibition brings together three artists whose artistic practices are acutely informed by their embodied experiences of structural, environmental and social imbalances in the world. Each artist has crafted a transdisciplinary practice in which art, life and activism are consciously intertwined. Articulated across a wide range of materials and processes — including performance, poetry, embroidery, drawing, sculpture and healing — their artworks celebrate the pleasure of the personal as a powerful means of inhabiting, imagining and remaking more plural worlds.

For the 2024 Venice Biennale, Frame commissions new works by each artist that will premiere in the Pavilion of Finland, in dialogue with one another.

The exhibition is supported by the Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture, Kone Foundation, and other partners.

Venice Biennale

Venice Biennale, founded in 1895 and held biannually, is the oldest and most prestigious international forums for presenting contemporary art. Commissioning and producing the exhibition for the Aalto Pavilion of Finland, designed by architect Alvar Aalto in 1956, is Frame’s most extensive international project. Finland participates in two pavilions – the national Aalto Pavilion and the Nordic Pavilion – that are both located in the historical biennale park, Giardini di Castello.

Selection process

The exhibition in the Pavilion of Finland is commissioned and produced by Frame Contemporary Art Finland. Frame has a varying practice for selecting artists featured at the Venice Biennale. For the 2022 biennial, Frame invited the artist based on previous open calls. For the 2019 and 2017 biennials, Frame invited proposals in open calls. Frame’s Head of Programme curated the exhibition in 2015.

“Selection is always a result of a careful process and deliberation. Every selection practice has benefits, so we rotate them. Choosing the artists or curators directly without an open call gives more time for fundraising and also producing the artworks. Still, it’s important to organise an open call regularly”, Frame’s Director Raija Koli says.