KuvA Research Days 2026
Participate in discussions about art and research generated by talks and performances by the Academy of Fine Arts researchers and doctoral researchers, as well as guest speakers they have invited. Save the date!
The Academy of Fine Arts Research Days will be held in December at the Uniarts Helsinki’s Sörnäinen campus, in the Academy of Fine Arts Mylly (White studio, Sörnäisten rantatie 19, Helsinki). During the days, the public has an opportunity to participate in discussions about art and research generated by talks and performances by the Academy of Fine Arts researchers and doctoral researchers as well as guest speakers they have invited. The program will be published in November. Welcome to think together!
Tuesday 8.12.2026: Mylly Materials Audit
Hanna Johansson, Professor of Contemporary Art Research, Academy of Fine Arts, University of the Arts Helsinki
Material Studies Working Group
The Mylly (mill) building on Sörnäisten has been the Academy of Fine Arts’ home since Autumn 2021. As a building, Mylly is also a “machine” that facilitates our work, through access to interior space, and to building services like ventilation, lighting and wastewater filtration—with our practices likewise depending on a diversity of analogue and digital technologies. How sustainable is Mylly in its construction and interior operations, and across our various disciplinary organs? Here we present some initial findings of the Material Studies Working Group, in the form of a five-year “post-occupancy survey” of Mylly and its resident operations. Invited speakers and in-situ demonstrations will additionally present ongoing research into sustainable non-toxic materials and practices (bioplastics, biochar-based concrete substitutes, home-made pigments), and more sustainable approaches to IT procurement and digital storage.
Programme
9.00–9.30 Morning coffee
9.30–9.45 Hanna Johansson (Professor, Academy of Fine Arts) and Tom Ackers (Postdoctoral Researcher, Academy of Fine Arts): Welcome and introduction
9.45–10.30 Annu Vertanen (Professor, Academy of Fine Arts): Mylly as a coworker
10.30–11.15 Hannele Kumpulainen (Lecturer, Academy of Fine Arts): There are many things that are not working
11.15–12.00 Santtu Laine and Toarie Strandman: Shaping The Future: Bioplastics in Arts
12.00 –13.00 Lunch break
13.00 –13.45 Ashish Mohite (Doctoral Student, Aalto University): Hyperion alternative concrete
13.45–14.30 Harri Monni (Lecturer, Academy of Fine Arts): Architecture as complex system of exclusion etc re art
14..30–14.45 Coffee break
14.45– 15.30 Tom Ackers: Data visualisations: “shadow sculptures”
15.30–16.15 Giulia Bellinetti and Dorieke Schreurs: The title will be announced later
16.15–17.00 Kerstin Schoedinger (University Researcher, Academy of Fine Arts): Industries of Denial, Stage
Book Launch: Kiskojen Kudelmia
As part of the KuVa Research Days the book Kiskojen kudelmia (“Stitching Tracks”) will be launched. The publication (in Finnish) is based on the artistic research project, which focuses on the borderscape between Finland and Russia. Edited by Jaakko Ruuska, the book is based on an artistic research project spanning from 2017 to 2025, which drew from numerous journeys along the remains of the cross-border railway. The book explores how sensible and absent intertwines in the spatial experience of the borderscape.The contributors to the book include photographer Hanna Koikkalainen, geographer Mikko Itälahti, dramaturg Mikhail Durnenkov, and visual artist Pavel Rotts.
17.15. –17.25 Toast and opening words
17.25– 18.15 Panel discussion: Rajan poikki aaveen jälkiä – miten rajamaisema esiintyi meille
18.15–18.30 Questions and comments
18.30–19.00 Free mingling
Wednesday 9.12.2026:
How can we conceive of art pedagogy without hierarchy?
Marika Orenius, Lecturer, Art Pedagogy, Academy of Fine Arts, University of the Arts Helsinki
During this Research Day, we will explore art pedagogy through connections, interdependencies, and relationships. What happens when we look at realities that exist alongside our own practices – and begin to notice how they may actually be shaped through one another? What possibilities emerge when we approach the study, teaching, and research of art through different perspectives, experiences, and practices? And how might we recognise and challenge pedagogical hierarchies while imagining alternative ways of learning and working together?
Throughout the day, we will explore current art- and artist-led educational projects, participate in workshops, and discuss pedagogical practices and structures in art education, as well as the possibilities for transforming them. Students’ perspectives and the issues they consider most urgent will challenge us to reflect on the hierarchies and future of art education. Together, we will also consider how practices of discussing art, giving feedback, and learning collectively might foster more meaningful participation.
Join us in exploring what becomes visible and what new possibilities might emerge when we approach art pedagogy through relationships, connections, and participation.
Programme
9.00–9.15 Morning coffee
9.15–9.30 Magnus Quaife (Professor, Academy of Fine Arts) and Marika Orenius (Lecturer, Academy of Fine Arts): The University of the Arts Helsinki’s current art and artist-led educational projects
9.30–10.15 Frank Brummel (Lecturer, Academy of Fine Arts), Heli Kauppila (University Lecturer, University of the Arts Helsinki) and Minna Suoniemi (Lecturer, Aalto University): Ghost Pedagogy: A Workshop in Collaboration with This Teacher
10.15–11.45 Jake Watts (Lecturer, Edinburgh College of Art, University of Edinburgh): See-Think-Plan-Do
See-Think-Plan-Do is a mapping workshop intended to plot the people and things attendees learn through, from, and with. This mapping is intended to help identify forms of knowledge and processes of learning that the group does, or might go on to, produce. This allows those present to make visible, or identify, relationships between the mapped materials to help provide ways to potentially co-develop forms of learning together.
11.45–12.45 Lunch Break
12.45–14.15 Student-Led Workshop: PERSPECTIVES and URGENCIES
What do students believe are the most urgent issues regarding the ways art-making and attendant history and theory are taught? What, from their perspective, are the pressing pedagogical, systemic, and political problems? How do they imagine universities and academies of fine art changing and developing in the future? This workshop sets out to map the understanding of the delegates at the Research Day to that of a group of students from the Academy of Fine Arts Helsinki, with the aim of questioning the hierarchies that frame narratives of higher arts education.
14.15–14.45 Coffee Break
14.45–16.15 Sarah Rowles (Director of Q-Art and Postdoctoral Researcher, Academy of Fine Arts): Facilitating Meaningful Participation in Crits/Critiques/Seminars
The ‘art crit’, also known as a ‘critique’ or ‘seminar’, is a core component of BA- and MA-level fine art education in which students come together to present and receive feedback on their developing artwork from tutors and peers. In 2013, Q-Art produced Art Crits: 20 Questions – a publication and video that used interviews with fine art students and educators to explore the purpose and format of the crit, barriers to taking part, and ways to facilitate more confident and meaningful participation. The workshop will use screenings from the video as prompts for us to think about the various ways we might facilitate a crit/seminar, interpret and talk about art, and how this format can be used to support the development of art students and graduates.
16.15–16.45 Closing Remarks: The Floor Is Open!
Thursday 10.12.2026: Universe of Images
Leevi Haapala, Dean, Academy of Fine Arts, University of the Arts Helsinki
Salla Tykkä, Professor for Contemporary Art and Moving Image, Time and Space Arts, Academy of Fine Arts, University of the Arts Helsinki
In contemporary society, we live amid a flood of images. Their abundance is not limited to material representations but extends to a wide range of linguistic and mental phenomena. The many forms that images take in our reality are at once self-evident and deeply complex.
Throughout this year, questions surrounding images have been explored at the Academy of Fine Arts through both the thematic theory course Universe of Images and the exhibition of the same name, opening in December in the Academy of Fine Arts’ exhibition spaces. Together, we have examined different ways of understanding images and their agency in diverse contexts, seeking to think the world with images, despite images, against images, and in lineage with them.
Beginning with the question “What and how are images?”, we have engaged with the historical, spatial, kinetic, social, political, material, and anthropological dimensions of image theories and image practices. We have investigated how images function, what they convey, and how their meanings are formed, layered, and perceived.
As part of this research day, we will address several particularly timely themes related to images and conclude with a visit to the Universe of Images exhibition.
Programme
9.30–10.00 Morning coffee
10.00–11.30 Sheung Yiu: Hyperimage Atlas: The Universe of Networked Image
11.30–12.00 Discussion
12.00–13.00 Lunch break
13.00–14.00 Suzanne Mooney (Lecturer, Academy of Fine Arts): Glass as a Support for Visual Information
14.00–14.30 Discussion
14.30–15.30 Leevi Haapala, Salla Tykkä and Jaana Okulov (Lecturer, Academy of Fine Arts): Guided visit to the Universe of Images exhibition
15.30–16.00 Coffee and discussion
The Academy of Fine Arts Research Days will be held in December at the Uniarts Helsinki’s Sörnäinen campus, in the Academy of Fine Arts Mylly (White studio, Sörnäisten rantatie 19, Helsinki). During the days, the public has an opportunity to participate in discussions about art and research generated by talks and performances by the Academy of Fine Arts researchers and doctoral researchers as well as guest speakers they have invited. The program will be published in November. Welcome to think together!
Tuesday 8.12.2026: Mylly Materials Audit
Hanna Johansson, Professor of Contemporary Art Research, Academy of Fine Arts, University of the Arts Helsinki
Material Studies Working Group
The Mylly (mill) building on Sörnäisten has been the Academy of Fine Arts’ home since Autumn 2021. As a building, Mylly is also a “machine” that facilitates our work, through access to interior space, and to building services like ventilation, lighting and wastewater filtration—with our practices likewise depending on a diversity of analogue and digital technologies. How sustainable is Mylly in its construction and interior operations, and across our various disciplinary organs? Here we present some initial findings of the Material Studies Working Group, in the form of a five-year “post-occupancy survey” of Mylly and its resident operations. Invited speakers and in-situ demonstrations will additionally present ongoing research into sustainable non-toxic materials and practices (bioplastics, biochar-based concrete substitutes, home-made pigments), and more sustainable approaches to IT procurement and digital storage.
Programme
9.00–9.30 Morning coffee
9.30–9.45 Hanna Johansson (Professor, Academy of Fine Arts) and Tom Ackers (Postdoctoral Researcher, Academy of Fine Arts): Welcome and introduction
9.45–10.30 Annu Vertanen (Professor, Academy of Fine Arts): Mylly as a coworker
10.30–11.15 Hannele Kumpulainen (Lecturer, Academy of Fine Arts): There are many things that are not working
11.15–12.00 Santtu Laine and Toarie Strandman: Shaping The Future: Bioplastics in Arts
12.00 –13.00 Lunch break
13.00 –13.45 Ashish Mohite (Doctoral Student, Aalto University): Hyperion alternative concrete
13.45–14.30 Harri Monni (Lecturer, Academy of Fine Arts): Architecture as complex system of exclusion etc re art
14..30–14.45 Coffee break
14.45– 15.30 Tom Ackers: Data visualisations: “shadow sculptures”
15.30–16.15 Giulia Bellinetti and Dorieke Schreurs: The title will be announced later
16.15–17.00 Kerstin Schoedinger (University Researcher, Academy of Fine Arts): Industries of Denial, Stage
Book Launch: Kiskojen Kudelmia
As part of the KuVa Research Days the book Kiskojen kudelmia (“Stitching Tracks”) will be launched. The publication (in Finnish) is based on the artistic research project, which focuses on the borderscape between Finland and Russia. Edited by Jaakko Ruuska, the book is based on an artistic research project spanning from 2017 to 2025, which drew from numerous journeys along the remains of the cross-border railway. The book explores how sensible and absent intertwines in the spatial experience of the borderscape.The contributors to the book include photographer Hanna Koikkalainen, geographer Mikko Itälahti, dramaturg Mikhail Durnenkov, and visual artist Pavel Rotts.
17.15. –17.25 Toast and opening words
17.25– 18.15 Panel discussion: Rajan poikki aaveen jälkiä – miten rajamaisema esiintyi meille
18.15–18.30 Questions and comments
18.30–19.00 Free mingling
Wednesday 9.12.2026:
How can we conceive of art pedagogy without hierarchy?
Marika Orenius, Lecturer, Art Pedagogy, Academy of Fine Arts, University of the Arts Helsinki
During this Research Day, we will explore art pedagogy through connections, interdependencies, and relationships. What happens when we look at realities that exist alongside our own practices – and begin to notice how they may actually be shaped through one another? What possibilities emerge when we approach the study, teaching, and research of art through different perspectives, experiences, and practices? And how might we recognise and challenge pedagogical hierarchies while imagining alternative ways of learning and working together?
Throughout the day, we will explore current art- and artist-led educational projects, participate in workshops, and discuss pedagogical practices and structures in art education, as well as the possibilities for transforming them. Students’ perspectives and the issues they consider most urgent will challenge us to reflect on the hierarchies and future of art education. Together, we will also consider how practices of discussing art, giving feedback, and learning collectively might foster more meaningful participation.
Join us in exploring what becomes visible and what new possibilities might emerge when we approach art pedagogy through relationships, connections, and participation.
Programme
9.00–9.15 Morning coffee
9.15–9.30 Magnus Quaife (Professor, Academy of Fine Arts) and Marika Orenius (Lecturer, Academy of Fine Arts): The University of the Arts Helsinki’s current art and artist-led educational projects
9.30–10.15 Frank Brummel (Lecturer, Academy of Fine Arts), Heli Kauppila (University Lecturer, University of the Arts Helsinki) and Minna Suoniemi (Lecturer, Aalto University): Ghost Pedagogy: A Workshop in Collaboration with This Teacher
10.15–11.45 Jake Watts (Lecturer, Edinburgh College of Art, University of Edinburgh): See-Think-Plan-Do
See-Think-Plan-Do is a mapping workshop intended to plot the people and things attendees learn through, from, and with. This mapping is intended to help identify forms of knowledge and processes of learning that the group does, or might go on to, produce. This allows those present to make visible, or identify, relationships between the mapped materials to help provide ways to potentially co-develop forms of learning together.
11.45–12.45 Lunch Break
12.45–14.15 Student-Led Workshop: PERSPECTIVES and URGENCIES
What do students believe are the most urgent issues regarding the ways art-making and attendant history and theory are taught? What, from their perspective, are the pressing pedagogical, systemic, and political problems? How do they imagine universities and academies of fine art changing and developing in the future? This workshop sets out to map the understanding of the delegates at the Research Day to that of a group of students from the Academy of Fine Arts Helsinki, with the aim of questioning the hierarchies that frame narratives of higher arts education.
14.15–14.45 Coffee Break
14.45–16.15 Sarah Rowles (Director of Q-Art and Postdoctoral Researcher, Academy of Fine Arts): Facilitating Meaningful Participation in Crits/Critiques/Seminars
The ‘art crit’, also known as a ‘critique’ or ‘seminar’, is a core component of BA- and MA-level fine art education in which students come together to present and receive feedback on their developing artwork from tutors and peers. In 2013, Q-Art produced Art Crits: 20 Questions – a publication and video that used interviews with fine art students and educators to explore the purpose and format of the crit, barriers to taking part, and ways to facilitate more confident and meaningful participation. The workshop will use screenings from the video as prompts for us to think about the various ways we might facilitate a crit/seminar, interpret and talk about art, and how this format can be used to support the development of art students and graduates.
16.15–16.45 Closing Remarks: The Floor Is Open!
Thursday 10.12.2026: Universe of Images
Leevi Haapala, Dean, Academy of Fine Arts, University of the Arts Helsinki
Salla Tykkä, Professor for Contemporary Art and Moving Image, Time and Space Arts, Academy of Fine Arts, University of the Arts Helsinki
In contemporary society, we live amid a flood of images. Their abundance is not limited to material representations but extends to a wide range of linguistic and mental phenomena. The many forms that images take in our reality are at once self-evident and deeply complex.
Throughout this year, questions surrounding images have been explored at the Academy of Fine Arts through both the thematic theory course Universe of Images and the exhibition of the same name, opening in December in the Academy of Fine Arts’ exhibition spaces. Together, we have examined different ways of understanding images and their agency in diverse contexts, seeking to think the world with images, despite images, against images, and in lineage with them.
Beginning with the question “What and how are images?”, we have engaged with the historical, spatial, kinetic, social, political, material, and anthropological dimensions of image theories and image practices. We have investigated how images function, what they convey, and how their meanings are formed, layered, and perceived.
As part of this research day, we will address several particularly timely themes related to images and conclude with a visit to the Universe of Images exhibition.
Programme
9.30–10.00 Morning coffee
10.00–11.30 Sheung Yiu: Hyperimage Atlas: The Universe of Networked Image
11.30–12.00 Discussion
12.00–13.00 Lunch break
13.00–14.00 Suzanne Mooney (Lecturer, Academy of Fine Arts): Glass as a Support for Visual Information
14.00–14.30 Discussion
14.30–15.30 Leevi Haapala, Salla Tykkä and Jaana Okulov (Lecturer, Academy of Fine Arts): Guided visit to the Universe of Images exhibition
15.30–16.00 Coffee and discussion