In the spatial installation created by the architecture studio Gaiss, visitors will find zines and publications by artists, architects, and designers — Evita Vasiljeva (zine published by kim? Contemporary Art Centre), Pauls Rietums, Agnese Bebre and Kitija Pekaine, Maike Statz (book published by Hverdag Books), Liene Pavlovska, and Svens Neilands, as well as books by Olivia Viitakangas and Sauli Sirviö (books published by Utu Press), and an issue of the magazine Avīzes Nosaukums created by Kristaps Šulcs and Elīza Brice.
The works gathered for the exhibition explore and question the relationship between the individual, time, materiality, and space. Through the publications on view, the artists, designers, and architects observe, draw closer, contextualise, admire, and critique a place — its materiality, the boundaries created by space, and its possibilities.
The exhibition was conceived as an artist-curated event, an attempt to think about how one’s artistic vision can be opened up as a conversation. Exhibition is curated by the association Neatlaidība — Liene and Oskars Pavlovski.
Forests have long been vital ecosystems, sustaining diverse species and providing shelter, sustenance, and spiritual significance for human communities. Across time and geographies, they have been central to myths and legends, often depicted as liminal spaces inhabited by spirits and supernatural beings. These stories reflect an ancient understanding of forests as places where ecological and cultural memories intertwine. However, the forces of imperialist expansion and extractivist capitalism have sought to suppress this other knowledge, reducing forests to mere commodities to be exploited for economic gain, erasing both biodiversity and the ancestral knowledge.
The relentless expansion of capitalist urbanization, industrial agriculture, mining, and logging has devastated forest landscapes, systematically displacing both human and more-than-human inhabitants. As forests are cleared for development, their vital role in ecological balance—regulating climate, sustaining biodiversity, and fostering interspecies relationships—is threatened. Unknown Territories: Forests resists these dominant forces of extraction and exploitation, embracing the forest as a site of coexistence, reciprocity, and resilience. It challenges the mechanistic and utilitarian view of forests as resources, reorienting them as dynamic, living spaces.
Forests transcend linear histories, existing as both material spaces and metaphysical terrains. In Indigenous and mythological cosmologies, forests are entangled with ancestral spirits, non-human agencies, and ecological balances that blur the boundaries between the visible and invisible, the past and the future. Whether inhabited by ancestral spirits or acting as agents in the balance of ecosystems, forests challenge conventional boundaries and offer alternative epistemologies rooted in relationality, deep time, and shared memory. At a time of ecological precarity, the Unknown Territories: Forest becomes a site for mourning and radical imagination, offering a pathway toward survival and the reclamation of planetary futures.
The artwork entrance_in-between_exit 2025 is based in explorations of subterranean networks beneath the Helsinki area. The installation incorporates materials identical to those used in critical infrastructure systems for the transmission of data, water, and thermal energy. Patterns etched into the flatten metallic components emphasize the tension between decay and modernization, referencing obsolete cartographies, cryptic numerical codes and symbols, recovered artefacts, and an overarching sense of spatial inaccessibility imposed by the surrounding granite bedrock. Materials: tin, copper, silver, textile, steel, fiberglass, spray paint, aluminum, inkjet print on fiberglass. 11 pieces in total.
I felt like I was recording the future. –Svetlana Alexievich
950 km. This route includes a ferry. This route crosses through Åland. This route has restricted usage or private roads. Your destination is in a different time zone.
I have never been here. I read somewhere that the building is the greenhouse of the former Nikkilä psychiatric hospital. I’m looking at the place from further away. I can see the roofless ruin of the greenhouse. Moss and grass are growing from its floor. I walk closer to the main building and look inside through the blue pipes. I step in. Spring smells of smoke.
Three rooms, a finished apparatus at the end.
In April 2024, I talk to Sauli on the phone and write down: For Sirviö, searching for materials is mining, and the places where materials are found are mining sites.
In February 1896, the French physicist Henri Becquerel’s experiments with uranium salts materialise radioactivity into a photograph. The radiation, invisible to the human eye, leaves two dark traces on a photographic glass plate.
In February 2025, me and Sauli talk on the phone about agents, logistics, numbers, smuggled Soviet helicopters. Materials spill into the conversation.
In April 1986, the town of Pripyat prepares for labor day celebrations. 1516 kilometres away, I sit on the ground and put sand in my mouth.
Three rooms, a finished apparatus at the end.
There is an open box on the floor. I can smell the trace on the glass. Maybe there’s a faint hum somewhere. I look out through the pipes.
The exhibition has been supported by Arts Promotion Centre Finland
Troy ounce 2025 inkjet print on wallpaper, wallpaper paste, etching on glass, graphite, wooden frames 1896 2025 paper, plaster, aluminum, soil, parts of the shipping crate (traveled between several unknown locations. Labels painted over) 16612025 inkjet print on wallpaper, wallpaper paste, etching on glass, graphite, wooden frames
1896 2025 paper, plaster, aluminum, soil, parts of the shipping crate (traveled between several unknown locations. Labels painted over)
16612025 inkjet print on wallpaper, wallpaper paste, etching on glass, graphite, wooden frames
Non 2025 inkjet print on wallpaper, wallpaper paste, etching on glass, graphite, wooden frames
Non 2025 inkjet print on wallpaper, wallpaper paste, etching on glass, graphite, wooden frames 1125 2025 painted steel (found in Turku 2019), fiberglass (found in Helsinki 2020), plexiglass, passepartout, gelatin silver print, part of a shipping crate (traveled between several unknown locations. Labels painted over) Parcel 2025 partially charred wooden part of a shipping crate (shipment between Istanbul and Helsinki 2008), mesh bag (found in Raisio 2025), inkjet print on envelope (found in Rovaniemi 2019), holder (found in Raisio 2025)
A detail of 1125 2025 painted steel (found in Turku 2019), fiberglass (found in Helsinki 2020), plexiglass, passepartout, gelatin silver print, part of a shipping crate (traveled between several unknown locations. Labels painted over)
Re 2025 inkjet print on paper, pins, wooden part of a shipping crate (shipment between Istanbul and Helsinki 2008), parts of the shipping crate (traveled between several unknown locations. Labels painted over)
A detail of Re 2025 inkjet print on paper, pins, wooden part of a shipping crate (shipment between Istanbul and Helsinki 2008), parts of the shipping crate (traveled between several unknown locations. Labels painted over)
Sininen 2025 wooden shipping crate (traveled between several unknown locations. Labels painted over), wood, inkjet print on fiberglass wallpaper, tin, copper, ceramic (found in Paris, Noisy-le-Grand 2022), gelatin silver print, passepartout, plexiglass, steel pedestal, paper, plaster, aluminum, soil Parcel II 2025 partially charred wooden part of a shipping crate (shipment between Istanbul and Helsinki 2008), mesh bag (found in Raisio 2025), inkjet print on envelope (found in Rovaniemi 2019), holder (found in Raisio 2025)
Sininen 2025 wooden shipping crate (traveled between several unknown locations. Labels painted over), wood, inkjet print on fiberglass wallpaper, tin, copper, ceramic (found in Paris, Noisy-le-Grand 2022), gelatin silver print, passepartout, plexiglass, steel pedestal, paper, plaster, aluminum, soil
Parcel II 2025 partially charred wooden part of a shipping crate (shipment between Istanbul and Helsinki 2008), mesh bag (found in Raisio 2025), inkjet print on envelope (found in Rovaniemi 2019), holder (found in Raisio 2025)
Cog 2025 paper, plaster, aluminum, soil, painted steel (found in Turku 2019), safety belt (found in Hyvinkää 2029), steel pedestal
Punainen 2025 wooden shipping crate (traveled between several unknown locations. Labels painted over), wood, inkjet print onfiberglass wallpaper, tin, copper, ceramic (found in Paris, Noisy-le-Grand 2022), gelatin silver print, passepartout, plexiglass, rubber parts (found in Raisio 2025), spray paint Cog 2025 paper, plaster, aluminum, soil, painted steel (found in Turku 2019), safety belt (found in Hyvinkää 2029), steel pedestal Sininen 2025 wooden shipping crate (traveled between several unknown locations. Labels painted over), wood, inkjet print on fiberglass wallpaper, tin, copper, ceramic (found in Paris, Noisy-le-Grand 2022), gelatin silver print, passepartout, plexiglass, steel pedestal, paper, plaster, aluminum, soil Parcel II 2025 partially charred wooden part of a shipping crate (shipment between Istanbul and Helsinki 2008), mesh bag (found in Raisio 2025), inkjet print on envelope (found in Rovaniemi 2019), holder (found in Raisio 2025)
Punainen 2025 wooden shipping crate (traveled between several unknown locations. Labels painted over), wood, inkjet print on fiberglass wallpaper, tin, copper, ceramic (found in Paris, Noisy-le-Grand 2022), gelatin silver print, passepartout, plexiglass, rubber parts (found in Raisio 2025), spray paint
A detail of 831 hum (within them burned just not uranium but time itself) 2025 inkjet print on wallpaper, wallpaper paste, etching on glass, graphite, wooden frames
Exit III 2025 paper, aluminum, soil, rubber part (found in Raisio 2025), holder (found in Raisio 2025), soap, vegetable oil, ceramic (found in Paris, Noisy-le-Grand 2022), Lambda print on Dibond, spray paint, varnish, plastic creeper, metal pipes on a doorway
950 kilometres (machines, they danced and swirled creating a mesmerising barrier of colors around the factory) 2025 inkjet print on wallpaper, wallpaper paste, etching on glass, graphite, wooden frames
Parcel III 2025 partially charred wooden part of a shipping crate (shipment between Istanbul and Helsinki 2008), mesh bag (found in Raisio 2025), inkjet print on envelope (found in Rovaniemi 2019), holder (found in Raisio 2025)
Anturit 2025 textile, plastic, parts of the shipping crate (traveled between several unknown locations. Labels painted over), holder (found in Raisio 2025)
950 kilometres (machines, they danced and swirled creating a mesmerising barrier of colors around the factory) 2025 inkjet print on wallpaper, wallpaper paste, etching on glass, graphite, wooden frames Exit III 2025 paper, aluminum, soil, rubber part (found in Raisio 2025), holder (found in Raisio 2025), soap, vegetable oil, ceramic (found in Paris, Noisy-le-Grand 2022), Lambda print on Dibond, spray paint, varnish, plastic creeper, metal pipes on a doorway
Exit III 2025 paper, aluminum, soil, rubber part (found in Raisio 2025), holder (found in Raisio 2025), soap, vegetable oil, ceramic (found in Paris, Noisy-le-Grand 2022), Lambda print on Dibond, spray paint, varnish, plastic creeper, metal pipes on a doorway
Exit III 2025 paper, aluminum, soil, rubber part (found in Raisio 2025), holder (found in Raisio 2025), soap, vegetable oil, ceramic (found in Paris, Noisy-le-Grand 2022), Lambda print on Dibond, spray paint, varnish, plastic creeper, metal pipes on a doorway
