The Finnish Cultural Institute in New York is pleased to announce the selection of artists, designers, and architects for its 2027 residency programs.

Next year, the Institute will host and artist Tinja Ruusuvuori, fashion designer Linda Kokkonen, and artist, architect, and teacher Iris Andersson.

The Institute’s independent residency program has supported Finnish artists, architects, and designers in New York since the 1990s. The new residency programs focus on artistic dialogue and cultural exchange, in addition to individual artistic research and creative work. Each residency includes housing, access to a local hosting organization, travel, and a monthly stipend.

The local partners The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture - The Cooper Union and Pioneer Works, will help the residents immerse themselves in the cultural landscape of New York, and offer support with contacts to the local creative communities and professional networks. For the first time ever FCINY will also have a fashion designer in residence. For the designer-in-residency, Ervin Latimer, Fashion Designer and Professor of Practice at Aalto University, will support the program as a mentor.

Tinja Ruusuvuori

Tinja Ruusuvuori is an artist who works collaboratively in social practice, film, and short-range radio. Field research becomes a way of staying with others, of building relationships that make room for a radical redistribution of nurture. Her current work turns toward matriarchal orcas, earth-stewarding nuns, and queer motorcyclists — communities that suggest other systems of orientation and exchange. By spending time with these self-organized systems of care and communication, within and alongside dominant frameworks, she hopes to open up pockets for collectivising intimacy. 

For her FCINY residency in New York, she seeks to deepen this research through archival work and local collaborations. These will explore intimacy between neighbors, queer forms of "too muchness", and sound as a shared space. Her time at Pioneer Works will allow her to learn from the city’s social art scene and experiment with performance and pirate radio as ways of making contact — sending signals out into the city and seeing what, and who, answers back.

tinjaruusuvuori.com

Linda Kokkonen

Linda Kokkonen is a Helsinki-based fashion designer working at the intersection of Victorian mourning dress, Finnish craft traditions, and contemporary fashion. Her predominantly black, handcrafted garments are created from antique and upcycled textiles, exploring themes of ecological grief, memory, loss, and renewal.

Through the FCINY Design Residency, she will deepen her long-standing research into Victorian mourning dress and its relationship to grief, gender, and the body, exploring it for the first time through the lens of American collections and craft traditions. Alongside this research, she will explore the garment district's craft traditions and build connections within the city's arts and fashion community.

lindakokkonen.com

Iris Andersson

Iris is a versatile architect, artist, teacher, and researcher working at the intersection of physical and social space. Her practice weaves together urban planning, writing, and artistic research to cultivate a holistic understanding of environments.

The residency at Cooper Union will allow her to focus on her PhD research, which examines perceptions of safety in the context of railway stations, deepen her ethnographic fieldwork, and expand her international network. During the residency, she plans to conduct fieldwork at Grand Central Terminal, collaborate with local scholars to strengthen her multidisciplinary, multisensory ethnographic approach, devote time to writing, and participate actively in academic activities.

irisandesson.fi & research.aalto.fi

Tinja Ruusuvuori, Artists (January-March 2026)
Linda Kokkonen, Fashion Designer (July-September 2026)
Iris Andersson, Architect (October-December 2026)

We received a wonderful range of applications for this year’s residency, and we’re grateful to everyone who took the time to share their work and ideas with us. Thank you to all who applied, and we hope you’ll consider applying again next year!