Withstanding Podcast Season 5

Withstanding returns with a new season!

The fifth season of FCINY’s podcast focuses on highlighting Finnish artists research, work and exhibitions in New York. This program is made possible with support from the Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture and the New York State Council on the Arts.

Envisioning a brighter future, Withstanding continues to bring together art professionals from both sides of the Atlantic to share and speculate, care and criticize, and to dream of more just and sustainable conditions for artists and art practitioners at large.

Make sure to check out also season 4, season 3, season 2 and season 1 of the podcast.

Listen to Withstanding on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or Soundcloud.

Curator Gemma Rolls-Bentley joins Finnish artist Nastja Säde Rönkkö to discuss Rönkkö’s work across video, performance, installation, and text. Focusing on the video work Those Who Kept the Light, the conversation delves into Rönkkö’s research on lighthouse keepers, histories of lesbian artistic practices connected to shorelines, and the contemporary queering of feminist maritime mythologies. Together, they reflect on how the sea has long connected women loving women, from Alice Austen to Tove Jansson.

The episode was recorded live at the Leslie-Lohman Museum, where the audience was invited to view four of Rönkkö’s films from 2022. While the films’ nature scenes transport viewers to the harsh shores of the North Sea, Rönkkö’s soft spoken texts evoke another landscape, one about climate emergencies and longing for loved ones. These wider frameworks, alongside the material presence of sea and shore, are bound together by the enduring figure of the lighthouse.

In Rönkkö’s research, the lighthouse emerges as a space of safety, not only for sailors, but also for the keepers themselves. No matter what happens, the light must continue its steady rotation.

Sapphism is an umbrella term for women loving women regardless of their sexual orientations. The term derives from Sappho, a Greek poet whose verses included her accounts of sexual and romantic love between women.

NASTJA SÄDE RÖNKKÖ’s practice longingly dreams of the future while exploring  presence through politics and poetics of emotion. Her work flows through nordic seascapes and digital landscapes to ask what humanity and the future of our planet looks like in the digital age. Her work has been exhibited and performed internationally in places such as Somerset House, London; SXSW, Austin, TX; Museum of the Moving Image; and Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art in Helsinki, Finland.

Gemma Rolls-Bentley has been at the forefront of contemporary art for two decades, working passionately to champion diversity in the field. Her debut book Queer Art; From Canvas to Club and the Spaces Between is a Lambda Literary Award finalist and has been highlighted as a must-read by Them, Dazed, Timeout, The Guardian, Cultured and the FT. Her curatorial practice amplifies the work of female and queer artists and provides a platform for art that explores LGBTQIA+ identity. Gemma has curated for a range of international galleries and institutions. Current exhibitions include Sea State at Wolterton, Norfolk (on until Spring 2026) and She Sells Seashells at the Alice Austen House, NY (on until 21st February 2026). Gemma has taught at numerous institutions including the Royal College of Art, the Glasgow School of Art, and Goldsmiths, and was a juror for the 2025 John Moore’s Painting Prize. She sits on the Courtauld Association Committee and the Leslie Lohman Museum Acquisitions Committee. The forthcoming publication Art Essentials: Queer Art, coauthored with Mollie Barnes, will be published by Thames & Hudson in April 2026.