The exhibition The Relate North 2024: New Genre Arctic Art Education

Lin Ni, I am Salmon, Breathing Game 46 W.I.P., 2024, Two-channel video installation

The Relate North 2024: New Genre Arctic Art Education exhibition is shown as part of the Relate North 12 Symposium, with many of the artists who are presenting in the gallery spaces also taking on additional roles as presenters, workshop leaders, and panellists in the symposium programme.

We think this layered involvement in the event is important, and it shows the need for diverse ways of sharing knowledge, and the value of different forms of knowing in multiple contexts within our academic institutions – through artworks, dialogues, questions, discussions and keynote addresses, in addition to the sharing that also takes place informally when we talk in the corridors, the canteen, and on the walks back to the hotels, or to our homes. All of these ways of sharing have their place, and by drawing connections between them we can help enhance our collective understanding, writes Neal Cahoon, who has curated the exhibition with Maria Huhmarniemi

 At the heart of Relate North is the aim to foster critical discussion and share experiences between our networked partners. The Arctic Sustainable Arts and Design network is a unique opportunity to bring institutions in the Arctic region together to discuss, problematise, and explore the global and local issues which are highlighted by the symposium theme. This need for creating and maintaining dialogue feels all the more urgent in the contemporary moment, when we are witnessing a series of rapid eco-social changes in the Arctic.

The exhibition works reflect responses and resonances to a range of topics within the sub-themes of the Relate North event. We ask, for example, how we ensure that multispecies interconnectedness is reciprocal? And how do we identify and take into account entangled, technological, and intergenerational relationships in the Arctic environment? The pedagogical and ecological turn in art and art education appears as a response to ongoing ecological crises and rapid changes. The exhibition works ask: what would a truly sustainable and just transition look like in the North, and who decides on its implementation? How can Indigenous voices be heard in this conversation? And what kind of transition are we seeking when we engage with these themes in art, design, and art education research?

The exhibition presents what a regenerative Arctic art and art education approach is, does, and can look like. Collaborative projects within the ASAD network, such as the Sustainability Portrait Project – Art and the New Genre Arctic Art Education: Development Project, have resultet various artistic pedagogical processes. These art and art education projects have engaged local communities, artists, and art education to promote sustainable transformation.

As the curators of these works, we hope that we are now in fact introducing New Genres of Arctic art – works that are enriched by the spirit of plurality, diversity, and dialogues within communities, and which can in turn continue to be enriching for the places where they are embedded. We hope that each visitor can connect in their own way with the artworks, the forms of knowing that they contain and maintain, and can consider specifically the sociality of the communities – both human and more-than-human – where these works have emerged from. We hope that this sociality continues into the discussions we will have, and through the collaborations which are yet to be made, Cahoon states.

Artists of the exhibition:

Dorsa Abolfazli

Hanieh Ahmadi

Fian Arrafiani

Suvi Autio

Peter Berliner

Elena de Casas

Lola Cervantes

Tina Enghoff

Karoliina Erkinjuntti

Amin Md. Faysal

Jeanne Gherardi

Mette Gårdvik

Mirja Hiltunen

Gary Hoffman

Aleksi Ignatius

Ante Jalvela

Aino Jäälinoja

Elli Jokitulppo

Timo Jokela

Ásthildur Jónsdóttir

Kanerva Kivistö

Korinna Korsström-Magga

Minna Kovero

Tanya Kravtsov

Heidi Lähtevänoja

Ville Lahtinen

Jenni Lehto

Aki Lintumäki

Leila Lipiäinen

Elina Luiro

Lotta Lundstedt

Sade Lylykoski

Olena Madsen

Annamari Manninen

Trish Matthews

Inka Matilainen

Elena Mazzi

Lin Ni

Anna-Sofia Nurmela

Anniina Pennanen

Silja Peltonen

Silja Peltola

Virve Pietilä

Jane Ronie

Sara Rylander

Tanguy Sandré

Riitta Sirkiä

Wenche Sørmo

Karin Stoll

Antti Stöckell

Kuutti Terävä

Tea Tuiskuvaara

Emilia Tuononen

Tommi Yläjoki

Søren Zeuth

Siv Årsand

Gina Wall

Many participants of community art projects!

More information on the Relate North Symposium, programme and registration:

https://www.asadnetwork.org/relate-north-12/

More information on the ASAD network also at:

https://www.instagram.com/asad_network/

https://www.facebook.com/ArcticSustainableArtsAndDesign