Announcement: Grace Hermez is the selected NEW INC Creative Practitioner

We have launched a new partnership with NEW INC, the acclaimed cultural incubator of New York’s New Museum, creating a direct pathway between Helsinki’s creative industries and New York’s leading interdisciplinary art and innovation ecosystem.

The collaboration supports a Helsinki-based creative practitioner to join NEW INC’s yearlong incubator program (2026–2027), combining residencies in New York with sustained engagement from Finland. The initiative is led by a Finnish consortium including the Finnish Cultural Institute in New York, the City of Helsinki, and the Consulate General of Finland in New York.

We are excited to announce Grace Hermez as our first ever Creative Practitioner-in-Residence at NEW INC. This is year 13 of the program, and we are so eager to be a part of it! 

About Grave Hermez:

Grace Hermez is an Aramean Syrian interdisciplinary multimedia artist and an architect from Helsinki, Finland. She focuses her architectural work on adaptive reuse and socially engaged architecture. Grace also explores some of these above-mentioned areas within her architectural practice, Beito.

Her interests with wanting to explore socially engaged architecture include human-centered design, examining the use of power within urban design and trying to bring attention to how architecture views and impacts marginalized communities within the city. 

Alongside her architectural work, Grace’s main multidisciplinary focus is video and multimedia art, which is playful in nature while exploring chaos, pop culture and surroundings she finds curious.

Throughout the one-year NEW INC program, Hermez will divide her time equally between New York and Helsinki. We are excited to see what Hermez will create and accomplish during her time with NEW INC.

This is NEW INC’s first partnership with a European nation, reflecting Helsinki’s newly unveiled strategic focus on international platforms, creative entrepreneurship, and cross-disciplinary innovation spanning art, design, technology, and science.

NEW INC supports artists and designers working at the frontier of culture and technology, offering mentorship, production facilities, and access to a global peer network embedded within the New Museum’s newly expanded campus.

“Finland has a remarkable track record in innovation, and we’re excited to bring that energy into our community” said Salome Asega, Director of NEW INC. “By joining forces across regions, we strengthen our communities and build pathways for ideas that can travel, evolve, and shape the future in meaningful ways.”

Hermez will receive full program funding, working grants, housing and travel support, and opportunities to present work internationally, including at NEW INC’s DEMO Festival.

The collaboration emphasizes long-term international embedding rather than short-term mobility, aligning with Helsinki’s creative industries strategy to help practitioners scale their work globally while remaining rooted in local ecosystems. By connecting Helsinki’s creative talent with one of New York’s most influential cultural incubators, the initiative strengthens exchange between two cities known for artist-led innovation, design excellence, and forward-looking cultural policy.

This initiative amplifies a broader surge in the visibility of Finnish arts and culture in New York during 2025–26. In addition to the NEW INC partnership, the Finnish Cultural Institute in New York and the Consulate General of Finland in New York have launched a collaboration with the New Art Dealers Alliance (NADA), introducing Finnish contemporary artists into leading New York gallery programs. In December 2025, The Metropolitan Museum of Art opened Seeing Silence: The Paintings of Helene Schjerfbeck, the first major U.S. retrospective devoted to the pioneering Finnish modernist, underscoring the growing international recognition of Finland’s artistic legacy.

In collaboration with:
The Finnish Cultural Institute in New York · City of Helsinki · Consulate General of Finland in New York · NEW INC