Synzoochory
This mobile exhibition and series of mini-symposiums and workshops will convene a wide range of perspectives on human-plant relationships through utilising strategies of the curatorial. The exhibition is part of the sixth Research Pavilion.
Series of events through November
Synzoochory is a series of mobile exhibitions, mini-symposiums, and workshops that run throughout the month of November at different University of Helsinki departments. It forms part of the sixth Uniarts Research Pavilion and is a collaboration between Uniarts Helsinki, Aalto University, and the University of Helsinki, facilitated by Helsinki-based South African curator-researcher, Nina Liebenberg. As part of her ongoing research, Planthology, Liebenberg curates exhibitions that showcase a wide selection of artworks (from local and international artists) alongside a diverse selection of research materials (images, objects, text and data sets) sourced from different University of Helsinki departments. She also combines them with objects and images from historical collections that pertain to the disciplines but are located elsewhere (such as the Kumpula Geological Collections, as well as the HUS hospital museum collections). The combination of these materials present to the audience curious overlaps and connections between the quantifiable and the poetic.
About the exhibitions
Three exhibitions will run for a week in each University of Helsinki venue – and change, as they shift. On the Wednesday or Thursday of each week, there will be a mini symposium, staged at the respective department that allows researchers, performers, musicians, artists, and artist-researchers to speak about their work. These events will be open to the staff, students, and researchers from the different institutions collaborating, as well as to the public. The programme of speakers will be tied to the objects on display and will expand on these materials through presentations and performances. As the curator and facilitator of the events, Liebenberg will be performing short linking performative intervals between the different presentations to highlight further connections between research themes and facilitate discussions. (This is a further exploration of a methodology first introduced in her KuvA Research Day in December 2023).
The exhibition units that are used as part of the mobile exhibition displays for Synzoochory were conceptualised and built in collaboration with the talented class of new Masters in Design students at Aalto University (Yiyang Li, Ellen Romi, Eve Saarentaus, Aapo Markkula, Henna Haarala, Verna Niemi, Boaz van den Berg, Eedla Serkelä, Ella Vainiola, Sanni Edelmann, Kristi Tšernilovski, Roosa Härkönen, Yijia Zheng and Selina Elg), under the guidance of lecturers Tomek Rygalik, Kai van der Puij, and guest lecturer Nina Liebenberg (during a 6-week period in September – October).
Three international artists working with seed and heritage were invited to participate in the exhibition displays, using a individually selected Luomus herbarium specimen as a prompt and provocation to create a bespoke artwork that forms part of the displays in each respective venue: Shubhangi Singh; Kate Ruck, and Joana Quiroga.
Exhibition and symposium on 3 – 7 November 2025
3 – 7 November 2025 Exhibition in Viikki Plant Sciences Centre
Venue: Foyer of Biocentre 3, Viikinkaari 1, Helsinki
Walkabout: 7 November, 12 – 1pm
6 November 2025 Symposium
Time: Thursday at 14:00 – 18:00
Venue: Seminar room 2402, Biocentre 3, Viikinkaari 1, Helsinki
Symposium’s programme and registration
14.00 – 14.15 Introduction (Nina Liebenberg)
14.15 – 14.35 Jasmin Kemppinen: Through tiny mouths: how stomata and water shape plant resistance against pathogens
14.35 – 14.55 Tuula Närhinen: Scribbling Trees and Floral Chromatograms: Plants making images
14.55 – 15.15: Wiktoria Fatz: ‘Tinman’ plants
15.15 – 15.25 Curatorial interval: Nina Liebenberg
15.25 – 15.45 Coffee Break
15.45 – 16.05 Vincent Roumagnac: Reacclimatizations (Kamishibai)
16.05 – 16.25 Sara Forlani: DIC microscopy to study stomatal environmental plasticity
16.25 – 16.45 Shubhangi Singh (Performative lecture): As/if
16.45 – 17.05 George Woodward: Too much of a good thing? Investigating the impacts of manipulating sugar availability on wood growth in hybrid Aspen
17.05 – 17.15 Curatorial interval: Nina Liebenberg
17.15 – 18.00 General discussion & viewing of exhibition
Speakers
Sarah Forlani is a post-doctoral researcher who did her master thesis at the University of Milan (Italy), in the laboratory of Professor Paolo Pesaresi, working on dual-purposed crops, in particular barley with increased photosynthetic efficiency. Forlani then did her PhD in Environmental Sciences at the University of Milan (Italy), in the laboratory of Professor Simona Masiero, working on plant senescence in the model species Arabidopsis thaliana and in tomato plants. She is now a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Helsinki, in the laboratory of Dr. Anne Vaten, where she works on stomatal development and plasticity in response to different carbon dioxide (CO2) levels.
Tuula Närhinen is a Helsinki-based multidisciplinary visual artist and scholar. Närhinen’s practice is committed to exploring the process of imaging. Her projects focus on the epistemic qualities inherent to analogue (photo)graphic techniques. She constructs experimental visual interfaces that connect the observer with the fabric of the world. The images that emerge from this interaction expose the latent pictorial potential in natural phenomena. The artist’s corporeal enactment and exposition of the material process are characteristic of her works. Re-adapting methods and instruments derived from the natural sciences, Närhinen facilitates the transcription of naturally occurring movements, such as water or wind, into visual plots. Närhinen received a Doctorate in Fine Arts (2016) from the Helsinki University of the Arts, a MSc in Architecture (1998) from the Aalto University and a Master’s in Fine Arts (1999) from the Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki. Currently she works as an Academy Research Fellow (2024–27) at the Uniarts Helsinki.
George Woodward is British-borne doctoral research student of three years, studying under the supervision of Dr Melis Kucukoglu Topcu within the Viikki Plant Science Centre. He conducts his research in the field of tree development, where he explores vascular cambium biology and wood development – employing techniques that span from the micro- to the macro-level – to improve our holistic understanding of how trees function.
Wiktoria Fatz is a doctoral researcher on Viikki Campus supervised by Melis Kucukoglu Topcu in the Forest Cambia Research Group. She studies wood development by identifying novel genetic factors affecting cambium activity.
Shubhangi Singh is a transdisciplinary artist whose practice considers ideas of absence and absenting as a way of reflecting upon what is visible, particularly in relation to history, memory and the labour of memorialising. Working across media, from text to moving image and site-specific installations, Singh’s works are routinely suspended between fiction and non-fiction, often adopting the position of an unreliable narrator. She currently lives and works in Helsinki.
Jasmin Kemppinen earned both her BSc and MSc degrees at the University of Helsinki, specializing in plant physiology and development. Her current doctoral research explores the role of a receptor protein GHR1 in the complex world of stomatal immunity networks. Her core interests lie in unravelling the mechanisms behind pathogen perception and the orchestration of various signals that drive stomatal movements. Jasmin’s passion for the botanical world extends beyond the lab, as she also cultivates, paints, and photographs plants.
Vincent Roumagnac is a Helsinki-based Basque-French artist and researcher, born in Biarritz. He began in theater, initially as an actor and later as a director. However, he moved away from straight theater practices and modes of production, focusing instead on how theatricality evolves in response to climate urgency and technological advancements, within what he has coined a discipline-fluid methodology. Roumagnac’s artworks, which merge visual, installation, and performing arts, are rooted in intervention and site-sensitive ecologies. In 2020, he completed a Doctorate in Arts at Uniarts Helsinki, with the artistic research project Reacclimating the Stage. Since then, he has conducted the post-doctoral projects Data Ocean Theatre (2021-2024) and Stages of Flower Power/s (2024-2027), as a visiting artist researcher at the same institution.
Artists and researchers featured in Viikki exhibition display
Vincent Roumagnac; Inkeri Halme; Jessica Lindström; Tuula Närhinen; Shubhangi Singh; Wiktoria Fatz; Milja Havas; Johanna Sulalampi; Sarah Forlani; Brecht Wybouw; George Woodward; selected artworks from the Uniarts Works of Art collection
Exhibition, symposium and workshop on 10 – 14 November 2025
Exhibition on 10 – 14 November 2025 on the Department of Geosciences and Geography
Venue: Physicum building, Geologian Valopiha, Helsinki
12 November 2025 Symposium
Time: 14:00 – 18:00
Venue: lecture room D112, next to the bedrock map, Physicum building, Geologian Valopiha
Symposium’s programme and registration
14.00 – 14.15 Introduction (Nina Liebenberg)
14.15 – 14.35 Ana-Belen Haivio Reales: 3D printing technology to replicate the geophysical properties of rocks
14.35 – 14.55 Samir Bhowmik: Mudra Machines: Performance with AI against Extractivism
14.55 – 15.15 Livia Schweizer (SIBA): Material listening: creating and performing geological and botanical scores
15.15 – 15.25 Curatorial interval: Nina Liebenberg
15.25 – 15.45 Coffee Break
15.45 – 16.05 Arto Luttinen: Mineral Messengers from Earth’s deep interior
16:05 – 16.25 Mireia Saladrigues: ‘Impermanence’
16.25 – 16.45 Kate Ruck: ‘In the Field’
16.45 – 17:05 Sari Palosaari: Habitat
17:05 – 17:15 Curatorial interval: Nina Liebenberg
17.15 – 18:00 General discussion & viewing of exhibition
Speakers
Ana-Belen Haivio Reales is a recent MSc graduate with aspirations to pursue a PhD in geosciences. In her master’s thesis, she explored the use of 3D printing technology to replicate the geophysical properties of rocks, with a particular focus on the electrical properties of flake graphite. This research is currently being developed into a PhD project (estimated start 2026) including a 3D printing, petrophysics and geodatabases.
Samir Bhowmik is a Helsinki-based multi-disciplinary artist, architect and scholar. He is an Academy of Finland Research Fellow at the University of the Arts, Helsinki, where he teaches and explores Extractivism and Ecology through Intelligent Performance Research: The Terra-Performing Project (team members include Lydia Touliatou & Minh Anh Nguyen). Samir received a Doctor of Arts (2016) from Aalto University, Finland, and a Master of Architecture (2003) from the University of Maryland, United States. His collaborative artistic works and writings have appeared in Leonardo (MIT Press), Helsinki Biennial 2021 and the Venice Architecture Biennale 2021.
Arto Luttinen is senior curator at the Finnish museum of natural history luomus since 2009. He received doctoral degree in geology and mineralogy at the university of Helsinki in 2000 and was appointed as a docent of geochemistry and petrology in 2003. He has worked as a visiting scientist in Cambridge, Hannover, Columbus, Washington, and Misasa, and held the position of Academy Fellow in 2005-2009. Luttinen teaches courses on Earth history and on processes of the planetary interior at the university of Helsinki and is an active communicator of science at Luomus and in the mass media. Luttinen’s research focuses on the origin of large volcanic eruptions, i.e. what happened in subsurface magma chambers prior to eruptions and how magmas formed deep underneath Earth’s crust. He is particularly interested in the greatest terrestrial magma eruptions, so-called flood basalts. His research on Jurassic (180 million years ago) flood basalt eruptions has involved several expeditions to the remnant lava deposits in Antaractica and southern Africa.
Mireia c. Saladrigues is an artist and researcher, or rather, an artist-researcher. Her projects build on extensive inquiries while the particular research methodologies are based on her artistic practice. Her current work explores the essence of sculpture and the impermanence of marble, tracing its transformation into dust and the memory it carries in disintegration. Collaborating with scientists, restorers, and stone professionals, she draws from their expertise to reflect on matter, preservation, erosion, and the afterlives of form. She often remembers how her deceased father—an artisan pastry chef—used to blow flour over the work table. That gesture of dispersal, ephemeral and precise, has remained with her as a quiet metaphor for her own methods: laying out particles, observing what remains, working with what resists or disappears.
Saladrigues is a candidate of the International Doctorate (DFA) of the Academy of Fine Arts, University of the Arts Helsinki with Behaving Unconventionally in Gallery Settings. During 2025, she held the solo shows Cooked Marble in Galleria Sculptor and From Sculpture to Cloud in Fondia, and participated in the group show Summer Rain in Kunsthalle Helsinki. In 2024, Pengerkatu 7 Työhuone held her first solo show in Helsinki. Among others, she was at the Royal Academy of Spain in Rome in 2022 to produce Crederrei, se fussi di sasso. On this, Rai Radio 3 launched the audio-documentary La Martellata. The Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut hosted Saladrigues’ lecture performance Into Sugar We could Have Turend. This was, among other places, also programmed by MNAC – National Museum of Art of Catalonia and Picasso Museum of Barcelona. Over the past two decades, her artworks have been shown across Europe, Asia, and United States, highlighting the Contemporary Art Centre of Barcelona, MACBA, 2nd Research Pavilion of the 57th Venice Biennale, Kiasma, Pori Art Museum, Joan Miró Foundation Barcelona, Le Lait Art Centre Albi, La BF15 in Lyon, CAA Washington, Videonale.13, Copenhagen National Museum of Photography, DIA Art Foundation, and National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts. Her work is held in the collections of National Fund of Catalonia, MACBA and ICUB, as well as private collectors. Galeria àngels barcelona collaborates with Saladrigues.
Kate Ruck (b. USA) lives and works in Helsinki, Finland, with close ties to Las Vegas, New Mexico. Her materially grounded works open spaces of association around fragmentation, inheritance, and cosmology, inviting layers of memories and different sensibilities to surface. She is interested in how traditions and cultural narratives persist in fractured or shifting forms, and how acts of making can honor and renew them. Each work emerges through relation, shaped by the materials and histories that move through it. Much of her practice develops in response to sites, often outside conventional gallery spaces, where place and environment become active participants.
Ruck’s work has been exhibited internationally in Europe and the United States. She holds an MFA in Sculpture from the University of the Arts Helsinki (FI) and was part of the inaugural cohort of The Centre of Nordic Otherwise (DK). Previously, she was an artist-in-residence at Factum Arte in Madrid (ES), and her projects have been supported by the Kone Foundation and the Finnish Cultural Foundation. In 2026, she will undertake a five-month residency at Morpho in Antwerp (BE).
Livia Schweizer is a flutist, improviser, and educator based in Helsinki, whose work explores the intersection of improvisation, intercultural collaboration, and non-conventional music notation. She is currently a doctoral researcher at the Sibelius Academy’s Global Music Department, where her artistic research focuses on the use of text and graphic scores to foster dialogue across disciplines and cultures and encourage community art projects. Livia performs actively in contemporary and collaborative projects in Finland and abroad, she is co-founder of the Earth Ears Ensemble, a contemporary music ensemble that focuses in presenting works from lesser heard composers.
Sari Palosaari is a visual artist and sculptor based in Helsinki. Her practice is grounded in an expanded, socio-ecologically attuned conception of the built environment as an all-encompassing habitat, where the interrelated metabolisms of matter, energy, and force unfold across multiple scales, and where the human is positioned as one planetary being among others. Palosaari creates sculptural installations that emerge from a sensitivity to emotional, affective, and sensory registers. Her works often respond to specific sites and contexts, tracing the interdependencies among human and nonhuman forces, where agency is shared across animate and inanimate matter. Operating across diverse temporalities and scales, from collaborative, process-oriented experiments to permanent public installations, her practice explores the intersections of ecology, material agency, and embodied perception. Her work has been exhibited at Kiasma, EMMA, Helsinki Biennial, Manifesta 13 Marseille, Varbergs Konsthall, Nordic House Reykjavik, Rauma Triennial and The Centre for American Architecture and Design (CAAD) at the University of Texas at Austin, among others.
Artists and researchers featured in Geosciences and Geography exhibition display: Kate Ruck; Simo Kellokumpu (in collaboration with Thomas Westphal); Mireia c. Saladrigues; Sari Palosaari; Samir Bhowmik (The Terra-Performing Group with Lydia Touliatou & Minh Anh Nguyen); Ellenor Rose Nish; Heini Niemenin; Ana-Belen Haivio Reales; Arto Luttinen; Tuure Leppänen; selected teaching models and specimens from the host department; selected artworks from the Uniarts Works of Art collection
13 November 2025 workshop tokonoma with artist-researcher Vincent Roumagnac
Time: 10:00 – 16:00
Venue: Department of Geosciences and Geography, Physicum building, Geologian Valopiha
As part of the Synzoochory exhibition showcased in the Department of Geosciences and Geography, from 10 – 14 November, artist-researcher Vincent Roumagnac will run a bespoke tokonoma workshop for 6 researchers from this department. This will occur on the 13th of November, and participants must sign up for this event because of limited availability.
The tokonoma is a small alcove within a traditional Japanese home which serves as a little stage for showcasing a mise-en-scène consisting of specific works of art, including calligraphy (kakejiku) and floral arrangements (ikebana), often complemented by precious objects of craftsmanship. The tokonoma functions as an indoor container, harmonizing these artifacts to reflect the actual season. The tokonoma is not merely a receptacle but an artwork per se, embodying the multiple interactions at play among architecture, interior, exterior, and the triptych-arrangement of poem/flowers/object.
As part of the triptych arrangement, participants will first choose a specimen sourced from the Geology Museum as their ‘object’, using this selection as a prompt and provocation to create a flower arrangement (ikebana) and a text (a small haiku/poem inspired by a dataset drawn from their own research) under the guidance of Roumagnac.
The workshop will run from 10am until 4pm (with lunch break) and begin with a brief introduction to the history and techniques of the Seika style of Ikebana, which Roumagnac has studied in Japan over the past fifteen years under the guidance of masters and passionate practitioners. Following the introduction, each participant will then choose their geological specimen and create their floral arrangement using seasonal materials provided for the session, inspired by both traditional patterns and the flowers at hand.
With a background rooted in a family of professional gardeners, tree growers, and florists, Roumagnac developed his hands-on floral skills early in life while working in their family business. Since then, he has continued to practice Ikebana as a dedicated non-professional, having studied in Tokyo and refined his approach over a decade.
On completion, the tokonomas will be exhibited as part of the larger exhibition in the department.
Exhibition, symposium and workshop on 17 – 27 November 2025
17 – 21 November 2025 Exhibition on Department of Pathology
Venue: Haartman Institute, Haartmaninkatu 3, Helsinki
20 November 2025 Symposium
Time: 14:00 – 18:00
Venue: Lecture hall 1
Symposium programme and registration
14.00 – 14.15 Introduction (Nina Liebenberg)
14.15 – 14.35 Dr Tom Böhling: Osteosarcoma – how the prognosis has become much better for this childhood malignancy.
14.35 – 14.55 Joana Quiroga: Intruder – essay 01: the anthropogenic
14.55 – 15.15 Dr Lisa Myllykangas: Tissue changes underlying dementia
15.15 – 15.35 Film and piano performance: Haiyun Yu, The Cowherd’s Flute
15.35 – 15.55 Tuure Leppänen: Excerpts, for Sustain: On media excavation and personal remembrance
15.55 – 16:05 Curatorial Interval: Nina Liebenberg
16:05 – 16:25 Coffee Break
16:25 – 16: 45 Nina Atanasova: Atmosphere, biosphere, and health are interconnected
16: 45 – 17: 05 Henna Riika Halonen ‘Tissue’
17.05 – 17:25 Jasmin Kemppinen: Through tiny mouths: how stomata and water shape plant resistance against pathogens
17:25 – 18:00 Curatorial finnisage: Nina Liebenberg
19 November 2025 workshop Fungal Scores by Maija Hirvanen
Time: Wednesday at 16:00 – 18:00
Venue: Haartmanin Institute (Second floor library, A209), Haartmaninkatu 3, Helsinki
Fungal Scores workshop introduces 3 selected artistic research practices weaving together choreographic thinking and mycological influences. The session includes an introduction, working with 3 artistic research scores and a discussion. The workshop draws from Hirvanen’s practices in expanded choreography and performance as way to enter into spatial, relational, transdisciplinary, material and embodied research enquiries – in this workshop particularly with the focus on investigating fungal-human relations. The workshop does not require any previous knowledge or experience. You’re warmly invited!
* Scores are a form of making structures and frameworks for artistic work that can be shared. Scores can be written down as instructions, drawn, whispered. Here, scores are used as a way of contextualizing, sharing and and working with an artistic research setting.
** Maija Hirvanen is currently working on her doctoral research on fungal choreography and performance at the University of the Arts Helsinki.
Speakers
Tom Böhling is professor of pathology at the University of Helsinki, and senior consultant at HUS. Educated at the same university he has made a long career, including functioning as vice rector of the university 2018-2023. His research focuses on malignant tumors, and more specifically on rare tumor types, occulting in various parts of the body. His thesis delt with certain brain tumors and during the last years he has focused on mesenchymal tumors, i.a. sarcomas. He now leads a research group, where the goal is to identify new targeted treatment modalities. He has published approx. 200 scientific papers and written several book chapters. In addition to research Tom Böhling has focused on academic leadership, and during his time as vice rector on sustainability in the academic world.
Liisa Myllykangas is an associate professor of neuropathology and consultant neuropathologist at the University of Helsinki and Helsinki University Hospital. Her research focuses on neuropathology and genetics of sporadic and familial forms of neurodegenerative disorders. She received her M.D. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Helsinki, where she was supervised by Dr. Matti Haltia. As part of her Ph.D. focused on the population-based Vantaa85+ study, she worked for a year in Dr. John Hardy’s laboratory at Mayo Clinic Jacksonville. Dr. Myllykangas carried out postdoctoral training on Drosophila models of neurodegeneration at Harvard Medical School with Dr. Mel Feany, after which she established her own group at the University of Helsinki.
Joana Quiroga is a philosopher from Brazil who became a visual artist to give Philosophy a closer presence to everyday life. In her work, she investigates how different power relations, and their consequent inequalities, can live hidden in our daily lives. To do this, she “zooms in” on things normally considered “obvious”, like air, bread, time, water, stomachs. Much more than an accusation or an abstraction, she wants to ask – with things – who we are, in a sincere quest for other understandings and with that, changes. At the moment her main research is on how it is possible to reflect on social inequality through bread and wheat, asking how they may have influenced our (western) way of thinking (PhD 2025-2029 University of Arts Helsinki). She has participated in exhibitions, projects and residencies in Germany, Serbia, Bosnia Herzegovina, France and Romania.
Tuure Leppänen is a visual artist working with photography, film, and installation. In his works, memory and feelings of belonging and disconnection are studied by examining how technological tools operate. By downloading, assembling, and recontextualising existing information, Leppänen’s works map out underlying power relations in the accumulation and dissemination of information in the contemporary moment. A question recurs throughout his work: How do machines affect the way we remember the past, experience the contemporary moment, and head towards the future?
Nina Atanasova is a university researcher specialized in atmospheric microbiology, and airborne transmission of viruses, in particular. She leads an interdisciplinary research group called Aerovirology, at the Department of Microbiology, Faculty of Agriculture and Forestry, University of Helsinki. Her group studies how solar ultraviolet radiation affects seasonality of virus infections, ice nucleation of various microorganisms, and how different environmental conditions affect virusinfectivity and transmission.
Haiyun Yu is a translator, writer and producer from Suzhou, China. With a background in linguistics and comparative literature, she explores the intersection of cultural heritage, ecology and identity in her artistic research. She received the Finland Scholarship in 2022 and completed her master’s degree study of Arts Management with a minor study in Music Technology and Sound Art at Sibelius Academy in Helsinki. The Cowherd’s Flute is Yu’s ongoing project about recollecting the past through muscle memory alone – no references to scores or recordings are allowed. The catalyst for the memory in this case is one piano piece The Cowherd’s Flute (He Luting, 1934) that Haiyun played at the age of 8 and participated for the first time in a piano competition held in her hometown. The piece is inspired by the folk tune called “silk and bamboo” from Jiangnan region in China where Haiyun is originally from and creates a polyphony with the traditional Chinese pentatonic scale. By playing The Cowherd’s Flute, Haiyun embodies the ecological memory of her hometown – her soil. Being far away from home both in time and space, her ecological nostalgia uncovers memory that has been intertwined with the imaged landscape and reality.
Maija Hirvanen is a Helsinki-based choreographer and performance maker whose works have been shown at venues such as Tanz im August (Berlin), ImpulsTanz (Vienna), Sadler’s Wells (London), SPRING Festival (Utrecht), and major Finnish festivals. She creates performances for stages and diverse sites, writes, researches, and teaches. Hirvanen was in-house choreographer at Zodiak – Center for New Dance (2013–15) and a THIRD Research Fellow at DAS Graduate School, Amsterdam (2021–24). She is Artistic Professor in Dance (2024–28) and a Doctoral Researcher at Uniarts Helsinki. Her artistic focus spans art and belief systems, re-learning, embodiment, and the more-than-human. She holds a BA in Interdisciplinary Performing Arts and an MA in Visual Culture, with dance studies in Finland and the UK.
Henna-Riikka Halonen’s works are often responses to a specific context or a site, aiming to highlight our need to structure experiences as fiction to gain an understanding of them. By creating speculative systems or worlds, her work explores our relationship to materials, objects, words, and living and non-living beings. Halonen has worked on and produced many collaborative and large-scale projects and commissions and has shown her work widely in international exhibitions and festivals such as Incheon Biennale of Women Artists, South-Korea, IFFR, Rotterdam, Hayward Gallery London, 2017, Biennale of Sydney 2014, Lilith Performance Studio. Malmo, Centre Pompidou, Paris and Gus Fisher Gallery, New Zealand and Das Weisse Haus, Vienna. Halonen graduated with an MFA in Fine Art from Goldsmiths College, London in 2006. She completed a Doctorate at the Academy of Fine Arts, Helsinki in 2020.
Jasmin Kemppinen earned both her BSc and MSc degrees at the University of Helsinki, specializing in plant physiology and development. Her current doctoral research explores the role of a receptor protein GHR1 in the complex world of stomatal immunity networks. Her core interests lie in unravelling the mechanisms behind pathogen perception and the orchestration of various signals that drive stomatal movements. Jasmin’s passion for the botanical world extends beyond the lab, as she also cultivates, paints, and photographs plants.
Artists and researchers featured in Pathology exhibition displays
Joana Quiroga; Henna-Riikka Halonen; Maija Hirvanen; Vincent Roumagnac; Johanna Sulalampi; Milja Havas; Sofi Häkkinen; Sari Palosaari; Tuure Leppänen; selected artworks from the Uniarts Works of Art collection
Open Research Performance by invited artist, Joana Quiroga
Title: Intruder – essay 01: the anthropogenic (2025)
Overview: I sit in the library for 2h a day and write uninterruptedly questions I have about wheat, especially those related to wheat and the Fungi that traveled to the Americas along with them.
Using the visuality of the materials found in the Luomus Botanical Garden Herbarium, I will then spend one more hour in the effort to create a classification system of those questions, similarly as it is done with the Fungi and Flora in the Herbarium. The trial is more important than a successful systematization, with the idea that the impossibility expresses the myriad of the topic.
Additionally, I leave writing material nearby, with an invitation for people to write questions or statements related this topic, and add these to the collection.
Performance schedule:
Tuesday, 18th – 14:30 to 17:30
Wednesday, 19th – 12:30 to 15:30
Thursday, 20th – Fictional Speculation with Andrea Franco – 14:35 to 14:55
Friday, 21st – 14:30 to 17:30
Contact
-
Nina Liebenberg
- Postdoctoral Researcher, Artistic research Academy of Fine Arts, Academy of Fine Arts
- +358505662645
- nina.liebenberg@uniarts.fi
Series of events through November
Synzoochory is a series of mobile exhibitions, mini-symposiums, and workshops that run throughout the month of November at different University of Helsinki departments. It forms part of the sixth Uniarts Research Pavilion and is a collaboration between Uniarts Helsinki, Aalto University, and the University of Helsinki, facilitated by Helsinki-based South African curator-researcher, Nina Liebenberg. As part of her ongoing research, Planthology, Liebenberg curates exhibitions that showcase a wide selection of artworks (from local and international artists) alongside a diverse selection of research materials (images, objects, text and data sets) sourced from different University of Helsinki departments. She also combines them with objects and images from historical collections that pertain to the disciplines but are located elsewhere (such as the Kumpula Geological Collections, as well as the HUS hospital museum collections). The combination of these materials present to the audience curious overlaps and connections between the quantifiable and the poetic.
About the exhibitions
Three exhibitions will run for a week in each University of Helsinki venue – and change, as they shift. On the Wednesday or Thursday of each week, there will be a mini symposium, staged at the respective department that allows researchers, performers, musicians, artists, and artist-researchers to speak about their work. These events will be open to the staff, students, and researchers from the different institutions collaborating, as well as to the public. The programme of speakers will be tied to the objects on display and will expand on these materials through presentations and performances. As the curator and facilitator of the events, Liebenberg will be performing short linking performative intervals between the different presentations to highlight further connections between research themes and facilitate discussions. (This is a further exploration of a methodology first introduced in her KuvA Research Day in December 2023).
The exhibition units that are used as part of the mobile exhibition displays for Synzoochory were conceptualised and built in collaboration with the talented class of new Masters in Design students at Aalto University (Yiyang Li, Ellen Romi, Eve Saarentaus, Aapo Markkula, Henna Haarala, Verna Niemi, Boaz van den Berg, Eedla Serkelä, Ella Vainiola, Sanni Edelmann, Kristi Tšernilovski, Roosa Härkönen, Yijia Zheng and Selina Elg), under the guidance of lecturers Tomek Rygalik, Kai van der Puij, and guest lecturer Nina Liebenberg (during a 6-week period in September – October).
Three international artists working with seed and heritage were invited to participate in the exhibition displays, using a individually selected Luomus herbarium specimen as a prompt and provocation to create a bespoke artwork that forms part of the displays in each respective venue: Shubhangi Singh; Kate Ruck, and Joana Quiroga.
Exhibition and symposium on 3 – 7 November 2025
3 – 7 November 2025 Exhibition in Viikki Plant Sciences Centre
Venue: Foyer of Biocentre 3, Viikinkaari 1, Helsinki
Walkabout: 7 November, 12 – 1pm
6 November 2025 Symposium
Time: Thursday at 14:00 – 18:00
Venue: Seminar room 2402, Biocentre 3, Viikinkaari 1, Helsinki
Symposium’s programme and registration
14.00 – 14.15 Introduction (Nina Liebenberg)
14.15 – 14.35 Jasmin Kemppinen: Through tiny mouths: how stomata and water shape plant resistance against pathogens
14.35 – 14.55 Tuula Närhinen: Scribbling Trees and Floral Chromatograms: Plants making images
14.55 – 15.15: Wiktoria Fatz: ‘Tinman’ plants
15.15 – 15.25 Curatorial interval: Nina Liebenberg
15.25 – 15.45 Coffee Break
15.45 – 16.05 Vincent Roumagnac: Reacclimatizations (Kamishibai)
16.05 – 16.25 Sara Forlani: DIC microscopy to study stomatal environmental plasticity
16.25 – 16.45 Shubhangi Singh (Performative lecture): As/if
16.45 – 17.05 George Woodward: Too much of a good thing? Investigating the impacts of manipulating sugar availability on wood growth in hybrid Aspen
17.05 – 17.15 Curatorial interval: Nina Liebenberg
17.15 – 18.00 General discussion & viewing of exhibition
Speakers
Sarah Forlani is a post-doctoral researcher who did her master thesis at the University of Milan (Italy), in the laboratory of Professor Paolo Pesaresi, working on dual-purposed crops, in particular barley with increased photosynthetic efficiency. Forlani then did her PhD in Environmental Sciences at the University of Milan (Italy), in the laboratory of Professor Simona Masiero, working on plant senescence in the model species Arabidopsis thaliana and in tomato plants. She is now a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Helsinki, in the laboratory of Dr. Anne Vaten, where she works on stomatal development and plasticity in response to different carbon dioxide (CO2) levels.
Tuula Närhinen is a Helsinki-based multidisciplinary visual artist and scholar. Närhinen’s practice is committed to exploring the process of imaging. Her projects focus on the epistemic qualities inherent to analogue (photo)graphic techniques. She constructs experimental visual interfaces that connect the observer with the fabric of the world. The images that emerge from this interaction expose the latent pictorial potential in natural phenomena. The artist’s corporeal enactment and exposition of the material process are characteristic of her works. Re-adapting methods and instruments derived from the natural sciences, Närhinen facilitates the transcription of naturally occurring movements, such as water or wind, into visual plots. Närhinen received a Doctorate in Fine Arts (2016) from the Helsinki University of the Arts, a MSc in Architecture (1998) from the Aalto University and a Master’s in Fine Arts (1999) from the Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki. Currently she works as an Academy Research Fellow (2024–27) at the Uniarts Helsinki.
George Woodward is British-borne doctoral research student of three years, studying under the supervision of Dr Melis Kucukoglu Topcu within the Viikki Plant Science Centre. He conducts his research in the field of tree development, where he explores vascular cambium biology and wood development – employing techniques that span from the micro- to the macro-level – to improve our holistic understanding of how trees function.
Wiktoria Fatz is a doctoral researcher on Viikki Campus supervised by Melis Kucukoglu Topcu in the Forest Cambia Research Group. She studies wood development by identifying novel genetic factors affecting cambium activity.
Shubhangi Singh is a transdisciplinary artist whose practice considers ideas of absence and absenting as a way of reflecting upon what is visible, particularly in relation to history, memory and the labour of memorialising. Working across media, from text to moving image and site-specific installations, Singh’s works are routinely suspended between fiction and non-fiction, often adopting the position of an unreliable narrator. She currently lives and works in Helsinki.
Jasmin Kemppinen earned both her BSc and MSc degrees at the University of Helsinki, specializing in plant physiology and development. Her current doctoral research explores the role of a receptor protein GHR1 in the complex world of stomatal immunity networks. Her core interests lie in unravelling the mechanisms behind pathogen perception and the orchestration of various signals that drive stomatal movements. Jasmin’s passion for the botanical world extends beyond the lab, as she also cultivates, paints, and photographs plants.
Vincent Roumagnac is a Helsinki-based Basque-French artist and researcher, born in Biarritz. He began in theater, initially as an actor and later as a director. However, he moved away from straight theater practices and modes of production, focusing instead on how theatricality evolves in response to climate urgency and technological advancements, within what he has coined a discipline-fluid methodology. Roumagnac’s artworks, which merge visual, installation, and performing arts, are rooted in intervention and site-sensitive ecologies. In 2020, he completed a Doctorate in Arts at Uniarts Helsinki, with the artistic research project Reacclimating the Stage. Since then, he has conducted the post-doctoral projects Data Ocean Theatre (2021-2024) and Stages of Flower Power/s (2024-2027), as a visiting artist researcher at the same institution.
Artists and researchers featured in Viikki exhibition display
Vincent Roumagnac; Inkeri Halme; Jessica Lindström; Tuula Närhinen; Shubhangi Singh; Wiktoria Fatz; Milja Havas; Johanna Sulalampi; Sarah Forlani; Brecht Wybouw; George Woodward; selected artworks from the Uniarts Works of Art collection
Exhibition, symposium and workshop on 10 – 14 November 2025
Exhibition on 10 – 14 November 2025 on the Department of Geosciences and Geography
Venue: Physicum building, Geologian Valopiha, Helsinki
12 November 2025 Symposium
Time: 14:00 – 18:00
Venue: lecture room D112, next to the bedrock map, Physicum building, Geologian Valopiha
Symposium’s programme and registration
14.00 – 14.15 Introduction (Nina Liebenberg)
14.15 – 14.35 Ana-Belen Haivio Reales: 3D printing technology to replicate the geophysical properties of rocks
14.35 – 14.55 Samir Bhowmik: Mudra Machines: Performance with AI against Extractivism
14.55 – 15.15 Livia Schweizer (SIBA): Material listening: creating and performing geological and botanical scores
15.15 – 15.25 Curatorial interval: Nina Liebenberg
15.25 – 15.45 Coffee Break
15.45 – 16.05 Arto Luttinen: Mineral Messengers from Earth’s deep interior
16:05 – 16.25 Mireia Saladrigues: ‘Impermanence’
16.25 – 16.45 Kate Ruck: ‘In the Field’
16.45 – 17:05 Sari Palosaari: Habitat
17:05 – 17:15 Curatorial interval: Nina Liebenberg
17.15 – 18:00 General discussion & viewing of exhibition
Speakers
Ana-Belen Haivio Reales is a recent MSc graduate with aspirations to pursue a PhD in geosciences. In her master’s thesis, she explored the use of 3D printing technology to replicate the geophysical properties of rocks, with a particular focus on the electrical properties of flake graphite. This research is currently being developed into a PhD project (estimated start 2026) including a 3D printing, petrophysics and geodatabases.
Samir Bhowmik is a Helsinki-based multi-disciplinary artist, architect and scholar. He is an Academy of Finland Research Fellow at the University of the Arts, Helsinki, where he teaches and explores Extractivism and Ecology through Intelligent Performance Research: The Terra-Performing Project (team members include Lydia Touliatou & Minh Anh Nguyen). Samir received a Doctor of Arts (2016) from Aalto University, Finland, and a Master of Architecture (2003) from the University of Maryland, United States. His collaborative artistic works and writings have appeared in Leonardo (MIT Press), Helsinki Biennial 2021 and the Venice Architecture Biennale 2021.
Arto Luttinen is senior curator at the Finnish museum of natural history luomus since 2009. He received doctoral degree in geology and mineralogy at the university of Helsinki in 2000 and was appointed as a docent of geochemistry and petrology in 2003. He has worked as a visiting scientist in Cambridge, Hannover, Columbus, Washington, and Misasa, and held the position of Academy Fellow in 2005-2009. Luttinen teaches courses on Earth history and on processes of the planetary interior at the university of Helsinki and is an active communicator of science at Luomus and in the mass media. Luttinen’s research focuses on the origin of large volcanic eruptions, i.e. what happened in subsurface magma chambers prior to eruptions and how magmas formed deep underneath Earth’s crust. He is particularly interested in the greatest terrestrial magma eruptions, so-called flood basalts. His research on Jurassic (180 million years ago) flood basalt eruptions has involved several expeditions to the remnant lava deposits in Antaractica and southern Africa.
Mireia c. Saladrigues is an artist and researcher, or rather, an artist-researcher. Her projects build on extensive inquiries while the particular research methodologies are based on her artistic practice. Her current work explores the essence of sculpture and the impermanence of marble, tracing its transformation into dust and the memory it carries in disintegration. Collaborating with scientists, restorers, and stone professionals, she draws from their expertise to reflect on matter, preservation, erosion, and the afterlives of form. She often remembers how her deceased father—an artisan pastry chef—used to blow flour over the work table. That gesture of dispersal, ephemeral and precise, has remained with her as a quiet metaphor for her own methods: laying out particles, observing what remains, working with what resists or disappears.
Saladrigues is a candidate of the International Doctorate (DFA) of the Academy of Fine Arts, University of the Arts Helsinki with Behaving Unconventionally in Gallery Settings. During 2025, she held the solo shows Cooked Marble in Galleria Sculptor and From Sculpture to Cloud in Fondia, and participated in the group show Summer Rain in Kunsthalle Helsinki. In 2024, Pengerkatu 7 Työhuone held her first solo show in Helsinki. Among others, she was at the Royal Academy of Spain in Rome in 2022 to produce Crederrei, se fussi di sasso. On this, Rai Radio 3 launched the audio-documentary La Martellata. The Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut hosted Saladrigues’ lecture performance Into Sugar We could Have Turend. This was, among other places, also programmed by MNAC – National Museum of Art of Catalonia and Picasso Museum of Barcelona. Over the past two decades, her artworks have been shown across Europe, Asia, and United States, highlighting the Contemporary Art Centre of Barcelona, MACBA, 2nd Research Pavilion of the 57th Venice Biennale, Kiasma, Pori Art Museum, Joan Miró Foundation Barcelona, Le Lait Art Centre Albi, La BF15 in Lyon, CAA Washington, Videonale.13, Copenhagen National Museum of Photography, DIA Art Foundation, and National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts. Her work is held in the collections of National Fund of Catalonia, MACBA and ICUB, as well as private collectors. Galeria àngels barcelona collaborates with Saladrigues.
Kate Ruck (b. USA) lives and works in Helsinki, Finland, with close ties to Las Vegas, New Mexico. Her materially grounded works open spaces of association around fragmentation, inheritance, and cosmology, inviting layers of memories and different sensibilities to surface. She is interested in how traditions and cultural narratives persist in fractured or shifting forms, and how acts of making can honor and renew them. Each work emerges through relation, shaped by the materials and histories that move through it. Much of her practice develops in response to sites, often outside conventional gallery spaces, where place and environment become active participants.
Ruck’s work has been exhibited internationally in Europe and the United States. She holds an MFA in Sculpture from the University of the Arts Helsinki (FI) and was part of the inaugural cohort of The Centre of Nordic Otherwise (DK). Previously, she was an artist-in-residence at Factum Arte in Madrid (ES), and her projects have been supported by the Kone Foundation and the Finnish Cultural Foundation. In 2026, she will undertake a five-month residency at Morpho in Antwerp (BE).
Livia Schweizer is a flutist, improviser, and educator based in Helsinki, whose work explores the intersection of improvisation, intercultural collaboration, and non-conventional music notation. She is currently a doctoral researcher at the Sibelius Academy’s Global Music Department, where her artistic research focuses on the use of text and graphic scores to foster dialogue across disciplines and cultures and encourage community art projects. Livia performs actively in contemporary and collaborative projects in Finland and abroad, she is co-founder of the Earth Ears Ensemble, a contemporary music ensemble that focuses in presenting works from lesser heard composers.
Sari Palosaari is a visual artist and sculptor based in Helsinki. Her practice is grounded in an expanded, socio-ecologically attuned conception of the built environment as an all-encompassing habitat, where the interrelated metabolisms of matter, energy, and force unfold across multiple scales, and where the human is positioned as one planetary being among others. Palosaari creates sculptural installations that emerge from a sensitivity to emotional, affective, and sensory registers. Her works often respond to specific sites and contexts, tracing the interdependencies among human and nonhuman forces, where agency is shared across animate and inanimate matter. Operating across diverse temporalities and scales, from collaborative, process-oriented experiments to permanent public installations, her practice explores the intersections of ecology, material agency, and embodied perception. Her work has been exhibited at Kiasma, EMMA, Helsinki Biennial, Manifesta 13 Marseille, Varbergs Konsthall, Nordic House Reykjavik, Rauma Triennial and The Centre for American Architecture and Design (CAAD) at the University of Texas at Austin, among others.
Artists and researchers featured in Geosciences and Geography exhibition display: Kate Ruck; Simo Kellokumpu (in collaboration with Thomas Westphal); Mireia c. Saladrigues; Sari Palosaari; Samir Bhowmik (The Terra-Performing Group with Lydia Touliatou & Minh Anh Nguyen); Ellenor Rose Nish; Heini Niemenin; Ana-Belen Haivio Reales; Arto Luttinen; Tuure Leppänen; selected teaching models and specimens from the host department; selected artworks from the Uniarts Works of Art collection
13 November 2025 workshop tokonoma with artist-researcher Vincent Roumagnac
Time: 10:00 – 16:00
Venue: Department of Geosciences and Geography, Physicum building, Geologian Valopiha
As part of the Synzoochory exhibition showcased in the Department of Geosciences and Geography, from 10 – 14 November, artist-researcher Vincent Roumagnac will run a bespoke tokonoma workshop for 6 researchers from this department. This will occur on the 13th of November, and participants must sign up for this event because of limited availability.
The tokonoma is a small alcove within a traditional Japanese home which serves as a little stage for showcasing a mise-en-scène consisting of specific works of art, including calligraphy (kakejiku) and floral arrangements (ikebana), often complemented by precious objects of craftsmanship. The tokonoma functions as an indoor container, harmonizing these artifacts to reflect the actual season. The tokonoma is not merely a receptacle but an artwork per se, embodying the multiple interactions at play among architecture, interior, exterior, and the triptych-arrangement of poem/flowers/object.
As part of the triptych arrangement, participants will first choose a specimen sourced from the Geology Museum as their ‘object’, using this selection as a prompt and provocation to create a flower arrangement (ikebana) and a text (a small haiku/poem inspired by a dataset drawn from their own research) under the guidance of Roumagnac.
The workshop will run from 10am until 4pm (with lunch break) and begin with a brief introduction to the history and techniques of the Seika style of Ikebana, which Roumagnac has studied in Japan over the past fifteen years under the guidance of masters and passionate practitioners. Following the introduction, each participant will then choose their geological specimen and create their floral arrangement using seasonal materials provided for the session, inspired by both traditional patterns and the flowers at hand.
With a background rooted in a family of professional gardeners, tree growers, and florists, Roumagnac developed his hands-on floral skills early in life while working in their family business. Since then, he has continued to practice Ikebana as a dedicated non-professional, having studied in Tokyo and refined his approach over a decade.
On completion, the tokonomas will be exhibited as part of the larger exhibition in the department.
Exhibition, symposium and workshop on 17 – 27 November 2025
17 – 21 November 2025 Exhibition on Department of Pathology
Venue: Haartman Institute, Haartmaninkatu 3, Helsinki
20 November 2025 Symposium
Time: 14:00 – 18:00
Venue: Lecture hall 1
Symposium programme and registration
14.00 – 14.15 Introduction (Nina Liebenberg)
14.15 – 14.35 Dr Tom Böhling: Osteosarcoma – how the prognosis has become much better for this childhood malignancy.
14.35 – 14.55 Joana Quiroga: Intruder – essay 01: the anthropogenic
14.55 – 15.15 Dr Lisa Myllykangas: Tissue changes underlying dementia
15.15 – 15.35 Film and piano performance: Haiyun Yu, The Cowherd’s Flute
15.35 – 15.55 Tuure Leppänen: Excerpts, for Sustain: On media excavation and personal remembrance
15.55 – 16:05 Curatorial Interval: Nina Liebenberg
16:05 – 16:25 Coffee Break
16:25 – 16: 45 Nina Atanasova: Atmosphere, biosphere, and health are interconnected
16: 45 – 17: 05 Henna Riika Halonen ‘Tissue’
17.05 – 17:25 Jasmin Kemppinen: Through tiny mouths: how stomata and water shape plant resistance against pathogens
17:25 – 18:00 Curatorial finnisage: Nina Liebenberg
19 November 2025 workshop Fungal Scores by Maija Hirvanen
Time: Wednesday at 16:00 – 18:00
Venue: Haartmanin Institute (Second floor library, A209), Haartmaninkatu 3, Helsinki
Fungal Scores workshop introduces 3 selected artistic research practices weaving together choreographic thinking and mycological influences. The session includes an introduction, working with 3 artistic research scores and a discussion. The workshop draws from Hirvanen’s practices in expanded choreography and performance as way to enter into spatial, relational, transdisciplinary, material and embodied research enquiries – in this workshop particularly with the focus on investigating fungal-human relations. The workshop does not require any previous knowledge or experience. You’re warmly invited!
* Scores are a form of making structures and frameworks for artistic work that can be shared. Scores can be written down as instructions, drawn, whispered. Here, scores are used as a way of contextualizing, sharing and and working with an artistic research setting.
** Maija Hirvanen is currently working on her doctoral research on fungal choreography and performance at the University of the Arts Helsinki.
Speakers
Tom Böhling is professor of pathology at the University of Helsinki, and senior consultant at HUS. Educated at the same university he has made a long career, including functioning as vice rector of the university 2018-2023. His research focuses on malignant tumors, and more specifically on rare tumor types, occulting in various parts of the body. His thesis delt with certain brain tumors and during the last years he has focused on mesenchymal tumors, i.a. sarcomas. He now leads a research group, where the goal is to identify new targeted treatment modalities. He has published approx. 200 scientific papers and written several book chapters. In addition to research Tom Böhling has focused on academic leadership, and during his time as vice rector on sustainability in the academic world.
Liisa Myllykangas is an associate professor of neuropathology and consultant neuropathologist at the University of Helsinki and Helsinki University Hospital. Her research focuses on neuropathology and genetics of sporadic and familial forms of neurodegenerative disorders. She received her M.D. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Helsinki, where she was supervised by Dr. Matti Haltia. As part of her Ph.D. focused on the population-based Vantaa85+ study, she worked for a year in Dr. John Hardy’s laboratory at Mayo Clinic Jacksonville. Dr. Myllykangas carried out postdoctoral training on Drosophila models of neurodegeneration at Harvard Medical School with Dr. Mel Feany, after which she established her own group at the University of Helsinki.
Joana Quiroga is a philosopher from Brazil who became a visual artist to give Philosophy a closer presence to everyday life. In her work, she investigates how different power relations, and their consequent inequalities, can live hidden in our daily lives. To do this, she “zooms in” on things normally considered “obvious”, like air, bread, time, water, stomachs. Much more than an accusation or an abstraction, she wants to ask – with things – who we are, in a sincere quest for other understandings and with that, changes. At the moment her main research is on how it is possible to reflect on social inequality through bread and wheat, asking how they may have influenced our (western) way of thinking (PhD 2025-2029 University of Arts Helsinki). She has participated in exhibitions, projects and residencies in Germany, Serbia, Bosnia Herzegovina, France and Romania.
Tuure Leppänen is a visual artist working with photography, film, and installation. In his works, memory and feelings of belonging and disconnection are studied by examining how technological tools operate. By downloading, assembling, and recontextualising existing information, Leppänen’s works map out underlying power relations in the accumulation and dissemination of information in the contemporary moment. A question recurs throughout his work: How do machines affect the way we remember the past, experience the contemporary moment, and head towards the future?
Nina Atanasova is a university researcher specialized in atmospheric microbiology, and airborne transmission of viruses, in particular. She leads an interdisciplinary research group called Aerovirology, at the Department of Microbiology, Faculty of Agriculture and Forestry, University of Helsinki. Her group studies how solar ultraviolet radiation affects seasonality of virus infections, ice nucleation of various microorganisms, and how different environmental conditions affect virusinfectivity and transmission.
Haiyun Yu is a translator, writer and producer from Suzhou, China. With a background in linguistics and comparative literature, she explores the intersection of cultural heritage, ecology and identity in her artistic research. She received the Finland Scholarship in 2022 and completed her master’s degree study of Arts Management with a minor study in Music Technology and Sound Art at Sibelius Academy in Helsinki. The Cowherd’s Flute is Yu’s ongoing project about recollecting the past through muscle memory alone – no references to scores or recordings are allowed. The catalyst for the memory in this case is one piano piece The Cowherd’s Flute (He Luting, 1934) that Haiyun played at the age of 8 and participated for the first time in a piano competition held in her hometown. The piece is inspired by the folk tune called “silk and bamboo” from Jiangnan region in China where Haiyun is originally from and creates a polyphony with the traditional Chinese pentatonic scale. By playing The Cowherd’s Flute, Haiyun embodies the ecological memory of her hometown – her soil. Being far away from home both in time and space, her ecological nostalgia uncovers memory that has been intertwined with the imaged landscape and reality.
Maija Hirvanen is a Helsinki-based choreographer and performance maker whose works have been shown at venues such as Tanz im August (Berlin), ImpulsTanz (Vienna), Sadler’s Wells (London), SPRING Festival (Utrecht), and major Finnish festivals. She creates performances for stages and diverse sites, writes, researches, and teaches. Hirvanen was in-house choreographer at Zodiak – Center for New Dance (2013–15) and a THIRD Research Fellow at DAS Graduate School, Amsterdam (2021–24). She is Artistic Professor in Dance (2024–28) and a Doctoral Researcher at Uniarts Helsinki. Her artistic focus spans art and belief systems, re-learning, embodiment, and the more-than-human. She holds a BA in Interdisciplinary Performing Arts and an MA in Visual Culture, with dance studies in Finland and the UK.
Henna-Riikka Halonen’s works are often responses to a specific context or a site, aiming to highlight our need to structure experiences as fiction to gain an understanding of them. By creating speculative systems or worlds, her work explores our relationship to materials, objects, words, and living and non-living beings. Halonen has worked on and produced many collaborative and large-scale projects and commissions and has shown her work widely in international exhibitions and festivals such as Incheon Biennale of Women Artists, South-Korea, IFFR, Rotterdam, Hayward Gallery London, 2017, Biennale of Sydney 2014, Lilith Performance Studio. Malmo, Centre Pompidou, Paris and Gus Fisher Gallery, New Zealand and Das Weisse Haus, Vienna. Halonen graduated with an MFA in Fine Art from Goldsmiths College, London in 2006. She completed a Doctorate at the Academy of Fine Arts, Helsinki in 2020.
Jasmin Kemppinen earned both her BSc and MSc degrees at the University of Helsinki, specializing in plant physiology and development. Her current doctoral research explores the role of a receptor protein GHR1 in the complex world of stomatal immunity networks. Her core interests lie in unravelling the mechanisms behind pathogen perception and the orchestration of various signals that drive stomatal movements. Jasmin’s passion for the botanical world extends beyond the lab, as she also cultivates, paints, and photographs plants.
Artists and researchers featured in Pathology exhibition displays
Joana Quiroga; Henna-Riikka Halonen; Maija Hirvanen; Vincent Roumagnac; Johanna Sulalampi; Milja Havas; Sofi Häkkinen; Sari Palosaari; Tuure Leppänen; selected artworks from the Uniarts Works of Art collection
Open Research Performance by invited artist, Joana Quiroga
Title: Intruder – essay 01: the anthropogenic (2025)
Overview: I sit in the library for 2h a day and write uninterruptedly questions I have about wheat, especially those related to wheat and the Fungi that traveled to the Americas along with them.
Using the visuality of the materials found in the Luomus Botanical Garden Herbarium, I will then spend one more hour in the effort to create a classification system of those questions, similarly as it is done with the Fungi and Flora in the Herbarium. The trial is more important than a successful systematization, with the idea that the impossibility expresses the myriad of the topic.
Additionally, I leave writing material nearby, with an invitation for people to write questions or statements related this topic, and add these to the collection.
Performance schedule:
Tuesday, 18th – 14:30 to 17:30
Wednesday, 19th – 12:30 to 15:30
Thursday, 20th – Fictional Speculation with Andrea Franco – 14:35 to 14:55
Friday, 21st – 14:30 to 17:30
Contact
-
Nina Liebenberg
- Postdoctoral Researcher, Artistic research Academy of Fine Arts, Academy of Fine Arts
- +358505662645
- nina.liebenberg@uniarts.fi