Visitor Programme 2025

Amal Alhaag
Curator, Amsterdam
Visited in March 2025

Amal Alhaag is an Amsterdam-based curator, cultural organizer, and educator. Her work unfolds through short and long-term collaborations with people, collective initiatives, and institutions, emphasizing, unlearning, dialogic practice, building infrastructures and transformative justice. Alhaag is the initiator, facilitator, and collaborator of various interdisciplinary platforms, including Metro54, Sustaining the Otherwise, and The Anarchist Citizenship.

In 2010, she co-founded Metro54, a platform for global sonic, cultural, and artistic practices, gatherings, (un)learning, histories, grassroots community work, spatial politics, and transformative justice in the Netherlands.

Belén Santillán
Art educator and member of Tenthaus, Oslo
Visited in April 2025

Belén Santillán is an Ecuadorian artist and educator based in Oslo. Her practice explores the intersections of art and critical pedagogies, focusing on how institutional models can be reimagined to foster access to creative expression. Her recent projects and collaborations have been presented at Henie Onstad Kunstsenter – DKS-LAB for kritikere, Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art (LCCA), Singapore Art Museum – SAM, and Centro de Arte Contemporáneo de Quito.

Adelina Luft
Curator, Romania
Visited in May 2025

Adelina Luft is a curator whose practice emerged and developed in Yogyakarta (Indonesia) along decolonial lines of thought and modes of working that favor long-term processes, collaboration and interdisciplinarity. Her projects address human-nonhuman interdependencies, land-based practices of resilience and resistance, as well as ways to self-determine a curatorial position in relation to institutional structures of power. 
Adelina Luft is part of The Resurrection Committee collective (RO), together with Ovidiu Ţichindeleanu and Raluca Voinea. They curated together the exhibition Listening to the Earth Beyond Silence at Kunsthalle Seinäjoki, 10.5.–9.8.2025.

Ovidiu Ţichindeleanu
Philosopher and culture theorist, Romania
Visited in May 2025

Ovidiu Ţichindeleanu is a Romanian philosopher, translator and culture theorist, writing on critical social theory, decolonial thought, alternative epistemologies, histories of senses and the cultural history of socialism and post-socialism. Ovidiu Ţichindeleanu is part of The Resurrection Committee collective (RO), together with Adelina Luft and Raluca Voinea. They curated together the exhibition Listening to the Earth Beyond Silence at Kunsthalle Seinäjoki, 10.5. – 9.8.2025.

Barbara Horvath
Curator and Head of Operations, PART Residency, Vienna
Visited Helsinki Biennial Preview in June 2025

Barbara Horvath is a Vienna-based curator and co-founder of art hoc projects with two decades of experience pioneering experimentation at the nexus of contemporary and public art, ecology, and interdisciplinary syntheses, exploring alternative spaces for thought and pushing beyond traditional formats through innovative scenography and visual storytelling.

Sandrine Colard
Curator-at-large, Kanal – Centre Pompidou, Brussels
Visited Helsinki Biennial Preview in June 2025

Sandrine Colard is Associate Professor of Art History at Rutgers-Newark University in the United States, and curator-at-large at the Kanal-Pompidou Museum in Brussels. She holds a doctorate from Columbia University (2016), and she is a historian of African, modern and contemporary arts, as well as a historian of photography. Colard was invited by Frame in the context of the Helsinki Biennial 2025. Her visit was made possible thanks to the support of the Finnish Institute in Benelux.

Sarah Lookofsky, Director of Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo
Visiting Helsinki Biennial Preview in June 2025

Sarah Lookofsky is Director of Kunstnernes Hus in Oslo, a kunsthalle founded by artists in 1930 that includes exhibition spaces, a cinema, and artist studios. As the institution approaches its centennial, Lookofsky explores how art and its institutions inherit and respond to histories amid contemporary crises. Lookofsky was invited by Frame in the context of the Helsinki Biennial 2025. Her visit was made possible thanks to the support of the Finnish Institute in Norway.

Emma Enderby, Director of KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin
Visiting Helsinki Biennial Preview in June 2025

Emma Enderby is director of KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin since 15 May 2024. She is a curator, writer, and lecturer of modern and contemporary art. Enderby was invited by Frame in the context of the Helsinki Biennial 2025. Her visit was made possible thanks to the support of the Finnish Institute in Germany.

Gabi Ngcobo, Director of Kunstinstituut Melly, Rotterdam
Visiting Helsinki Biennial Preview in June 2025

Gabi Ngcobo is the Director of Kunstinstituut Melly in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. In 2020–2023, she was Curatorial Director at the Javett Art Centre at the University of Pretoria. In 2018, she curated the 10th Berlin Biennale and was one of the co-curators of the 32nd São Paulo Biennial. Gabi Ngcobo was invited by Frame in the context of the Helsinki Biennial 2025. Her visit was made possible thanks to the support of the Finnish Institute in Benelux.

Christine Lehnert, Curator of GIBCA 2025 and Senior Curator at Kunsthalle Baden-Baden
Visiting Helsinki Biennial Preview in June 2025

Christina Lehnert was the curator for the 13th edition of the Göteborg International Biennial of Contemporary Art. She is also the Senior Curator at Kunsthalle Baden-Baden in Germany. Christina has curated a series of exhibitions exploring art as a response to political movements, with a focus on sound and performance. Lehnert was invited by Frame in the context of the Helsinki Biennial 2025.

Pia Zeitzen and Sasha Shevchenko, Curators, Kollektiv Collective, London
Visiting Helsinki Biennial Preview in June 2025

Kollektiv Collective is a London-based curatorial collective founded by independent curators and writers Pia Zeitzen and Sasha Shevchenko. They specialise in site-specific curatorial projects with a research- and process-led collaborative practice. Zeitzen and Shevchenko were invited by Frame in the context of the Helsinki Biennial 2025. Their visit was made possible thanks to the support of the Finnish Institute in the UK and Ireland.

Deborah Smith, Independent Curator, UK
Visiting Helsinki Biennial Preview in June 2025

Deborah Smith is an independent curator and the former Director of the Arts Council Collection, the UK’s most widely circulated national collection of modern and contemporary British art. Deborah Smith was invited by Frame in the context of the Helsinki Biennial 2025. Her visit was made possible thanks to the support of the Finnish Institute in the UK and Ireland.

Cliff Lauson, Director of Exhibitions, Somerset House, UK
Visiting Helsinki Biennial Preview in June 2025

Cliff Lauson is the Director of Exhibitions at Somerset House, London. Until 2022, he was Senior Curator at the Hayward Gallery, Southbank Centre. He has held previous positions at the Tate Modern and the UBC Museum of Anthropology, Vancouver. Lauson was invited by Frame in the context of the Helsinki Biennial 2025. His visit was made possible thanks to the support of the Finnish Institute in the UK and Ireland.

Aliyah Hasinah, Curator and founder of Black Curatorial Network, UK
Visiting Helsinki Biennial Preview in June 2025

Aliyah Hasinah is a filmmaker, curator, and writer based in the UK. She is the founder of Black Curatorial – A curatorial agency prioritising radical Black thought alongside Black Artists, Curators, and Audiences. Aliyah’s interdisciplinary practice centres decoloniality, cultural equity, and healing
through play. Hasinah was invited by Frame in the context of the Helsinki Biennial 2025. Her visit was made possible thanks to the support of the Finnish Institute in the UK and Ireland.

Pauline Koffi Vandet, Independent curator and producer, Denmark
Visiting Helsinki Biennial Preview in June 2025

Pauline Koffi Vandet is part of the curatorial duo Koffi & Højgaard based in Copenhagen. Her practice is characterised by a critical, dialogical, and process-oriented approach to exhibition-making, emphasizing collaboration and responsiveness to social, political, cultural, and spatial contexts.
Pauline Koffi Vandet was invited by the Finnish Institute in Denmark in collaboration with Frame in the context of the Helsinki Biennial 2025. Her visit was made possible thanks to the support of the Finnish Institute in Denmark.

Josephine Fity, Curator and Art Historian, Denmark
Visiting Helsinki Biennial Preview in June 2025

Josephine Fity is an art historian, independent curator, and artist consultant based in Copenhagen. She advises artists and collectors with a focus on fundraising, writing, and strategic guidance, coordinates exhibitions, and develops curatorial projects in exciting and unexpected spaces outside art institutions. Fity was invited by the Finnish Institute in Denmark in collaboration with Frame in the context of the Helsinki Biennial 2025. Her visit was made possible thanks to the support of the Finnish Institute in Denmark.

Mariam Elnozahy
Curator, Researcher and Writer, Artistic Director of Konsthall C in Stockholm
September 2025

Mariam Elnozahy was invited to visit Finland in collaboration with PUBLICS and participated in Positioning, a symposium on curatorial thinking in the Nordic-Baltic region and beyond, taking place 29.9.–2.10.2025.

Anette Østerby
Art historian and Curator, Denmark
November 2025

Anette Østerby visited Finland to conduct research on the development of artistic resilience within art organisations. The project was made in collaboration with three Nordic art organisations, including Frame Contemporary Art Finland, Bildkonst Sverige, and Foreningen af Kunsthaller i Danmark.