Anna Jensen & Eliisa Suvanto on their collective curatorial practice

Anna Jensen and Eliisa Suvanto have spent the months of January and February, in collaboration with Residency Unlimited, as the FCINY’s curators-in-residence. Jensen and Suvanto are pioneers in curating collective, site-specific and non-institutional contemporary art in Finland. Together, the curatorial duo has carried out more than 20 projects in the public space, which have addressed issues such as resources, social structures, accessibility, and exhibiting practices. We wanted to know more about the duo’s practice, and learn what they have been up to during their time in New York.

How would you describe your collaborative curatorial practice?

Our collective curatorial practice is research-oriented, collaborative and site-specific. Our roles differ a little bit, Anna being more of an artist-curator focusing on writing and exploring new themes, methods and methodologies while Eliisa has a background in design and has also worked with artist-led initiatives in a role of managing director, so also focusing very much on producing. But the concepts and forms are always created together as well as the working groups, venues and sites. In our practice we like to emphasize joy and friendships, while also aiming to create better and more sustainable practices that then would serve this emphasis. One of our methods is that one thing always leads to another, like a domino effect, so for us it makes sense that many things we do are entangled. 

Tell us a little bit about what you have been working on during your residency?

During our stay we have wanted to keep the doors open for new ideas and directions. We think that's a very New York way of doing things. We have met so many inspiring artists and curators and visited amazing places. This will definitely have an impact on our projects happening in the near future, but even more so, those that will slowly start evolving after this residency period. 

We are currently working on three group shows that will take place this year: one at Mustarinda in North-East Finland opening in June, and two in Helsinki: at artist-led SIC and at the Finnish Museum of Natural History. This is a lot, but at the same time we are currently working as freelance curators so we have created these opportunities ourselves, and we are most of all very excited. This has been a great opportunity to take the time to develop and consider these projects, all of which have their individual and unique starting points and different collaborators. Like most of our projects, all of them somehow concern questions of our lived environments, public and semi-public spaces, and the possibilities of art as a social and political force. And we can't think of a better place to dive into these questions than New York and its culture- and art-saturated everyday life.

What inspired your decision to focus on researching pioneering land art and site-specific practices in the United States?

Since the beginning when we started working together in 2013, our practice has been site-specific and has happened in a direct relation to our surroundings, situations and social structures, but also in a negotiation with the history of art. We have appropriated concepts like “biennial” and “world expo” but also revisited genres and traditions, and what kind of questions they raise in today’s climate. Questions of sustainable practices, ethics and ecologies brought us to consider land and environmental art, and what role and relevance they can still have today. This thought process began before the Sandstorm exhibition in 2019, which was realized in the fragile nature of the Yyteri dunes, and has continued since then, even though we don't necessarily create exhibitions that deal with it. More recently, we have explored the relationship between art and tourism, for example in Sotkamo last year in the exhibition #Holiday365, and in our somewhat related text In Praise of Pällistely - Art, nature and tourism as felt and imagined experiences (Pällistellä = to gawk, to look at something with a wondering and curious gaze) for Mustarinda magazine. 

The US also has a more established tradition of facilitating site-specific and sustainable art, which in turn has been important both regionally and for individual artists. It was interesting to visit the many foundations and institutions and see the different forms their work takes in different places and environments. Compared to Finland, the scale of action is impressive, and it also means that art and artistic practices have a more grounded impact.

As you’ve immersed yourself in the art scene of New York, are there specific aspects of the city's cultural landscape or artistic community that you find particularly inspiring or influential?

We can already say that there are so many inspiring aspects that will resonate in the long term, and at the same time it’s only a fraction of what we have seen in less than two months. Seeing so many different art worlds coexist and sometimes merge has been interesting. One of the things we have noticed is that art in general has a really visible presence here. So it feels like it's really appreciated, much more so than in Finland for instance. And as we have for example explored all different sites of Dia Art Foundation – including Marfa, Texas – it has been interesting to see how artists can be supported long-term by foundations but also by other artists. For us it’s also interesting how they are supporting artworks that wouldn’t happen otherwise. Of course it’s only a very few artists but it’s an exciting approach when we as freelancers think about funding and maintaining sustainable practices. During our stay, we attended many events and public talks, and it became clear that even if the funding structure is different in different places and the role of art is different in different countries and societies, the precarious position of artists and cultural workers remains the same. This is, of course, accentuated in hyper-expensive places like New York. Still, we love how excited and open people seem to be here, whether it be new encounters, people, events, practices, or exhibitions, and the enthusiastic atmosphere that results. We have felt genuinely and warmly welcomed and have been taken by the genuine interest in our practice.

What is waiting for you after you return from New York?

We have a pretty hectic year ahead of us, so we will almost immediately dive into more practical work related to the exhibitions and projects ahead. Now in New York we have been able to consider them thematically and how to shape and mediate them, but when we return to Helsinki, this work will be put into action. We will begin to meet with the artists and collaborators of each project. Inspired by all the meetings we had here, we also plan to start meeting other curators and people from different institutions.

During our stay we received a new grant from the Finnish Cultural Foundation to pilot a new project called Cotyledon (in Finnish Sirkkalehdet) and we are very excited about it! The project is about the future: future art and its makers. We will be working with young people in different locations and public spaces, both urban and rural, looking at ways to create sustainable and process-based artworks that can increase understanding of one's role in relation to the environment and a sense of belonging and participation. And finally, for the first time ever, we will be working closely together with a bigger art institution as our collective Porin kulttuurisäätö has been invited to curate an exhibition about public monuments and memories. 

Check out Anna Jensen, Eliisa Suvanto, and Porin kulttuurisääto on Instagram.

Published: February 28, 2024