Limits to Growth

Limits to Growth
Experimental exhibition and performance at NADA Miami
📅 3–7 December 2024, between 1–6pm
📍 Ice Palace Studios, 1400 N Miami Ave, Miami, FL 33136

The Finnish Cultural Institute in New York is thrilled to present Limits to Growth, a nomadic exhibition and performance as part of NADA Miami program. Addressing various social and economic power structures and art world dynamics, Limits to Growth brings together a performative work by Nestori Syrjälä together with new commissioned works by Jaakko Pallasvuo and Bogna Luiza Wisniewska.

During the fair week, the NADA Miami visitor may encounter a figure at the Ice Palace Studios immersed in reading The Limits to Growth, a report written in 1972 by environmental scientists Donella H. Meadows, Dennis L. Meadows, Jorgen Randers, and William W. Behrens III. The report predicted and discussed the now obvious imbalance between ideals and dreams of exponential economic growth and our planet’s factual resources. Presented originally in 2017 at a start-up event in Turku, Finland, Nestori Syrjälä’s performative work takes in further connotations through its presentation at an art fair context in 2024.

In addition to their deviant art fair activities, the figure wandering around the NADA Miami site is wearing an artwork and carrying one on them. Building upon the ethos of The Limits to Growth report, these two artworks have been commissioned especially for the occasion from Jaakko Pallasvuo and Bogna Luiza Wisniewska. Together the works bring forth the standpoint of an individual as part of the bigger picture alongside the realm of feelings and emotions.

The project is curated by Elina Suoyrjö, Director of Programs at the FCINY. The performance is carried out by artists Heather Lyon and misael soto. The visual identity is designed by Marina Veziko.

Jaakko Pallasvuo (b. 1987) is an artist and writer living in Helsinki. Pallasvuo’s works are not about anything and have been exhibited at the 14th Baltic Triennial, BOZAR, Frankfurter Kunstverein, Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw and New York Film Festival, among other places. Pallasvuo's comics for the instagram account avocado_ibuprofen were collected into a book by Perfectly Acceptable Press in 2021.

Nestori Syrjälä (b. 1983) works with sculpture, installation and public interventions. For the past ten years he has been obsessed with the crisis in human relations with the environment: the ground under our feet, the air we breathe, and the oceans that surround us are all turning strange. Syrjälä’s work explores this strangeness through his material sculptural practice as well as through performative situations created in public space. Syrjälä has studied sculpture at the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts and the Royal Institute of Art in Sweden. His work has been shown at Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, Matadero Madrid and Gwangju Biennale.

Bogna Luiza Wisniewska (b. 1988, Poland) is a soft-hearted person who lives and works in Helsinki, where she maintains an arts practice that fosters cozy spaces and good company, bringing people together through painting, ceramics, textiles, exhibition-making, installation, cooking, gardening, and hosting. Her practice is rooted in care, kindness, fragility, queerness and the exploration of these elements through various mediums. She is also part of the artist-run gallery SIC.