Curator and artists

Taru Elfving is a curator and writer focused onnurturing undisciplinary and site-sensitive enquiries at the intersections of ecological, feminist and decolonial practices.

As artistic director of CAA Contemporary Art Archipelago she currently leads a research residency programmeon the island of Seili in the Baltic Sea in collaboration with the Archipelago Research Institute of Turku University. She is also a researcher in the transdisciplinary Centre for Sustainable Ocean Studies SOS at Åbo Akademi University.

Monika Czyżyk is a Polish visual artist based in Helsinki, Finland. She works with dirty media: moving images, VR and clay within the context of experimental documentaries and socially engaged projects. Monika collects clay from a variety of places and uses it to create spiritually driven clay window paintings.

Her working methodology is divided into travel-led and site-specific research and studio practices based on Vartiosaari Island in Helsinki, where she is part of the Vartiosaari Island association. She considers the island as an active partner and collaborator in all her projects. Her work has been shown in exhibitions and festivals including Malmö Konstmuseum; Sequences biennial, Reykjavik; Sinne gallery, Helsinki; Survival Kit, Riga; Württembergischer Kunstverein, Stuttgart, and Floating University, Berlin.

Julia Lohmann is an Associate Professor of Contemporary Design at Aalto University, Finland, and an Honorary Royal Designer for Industry in Regenerative Design. As a creative practitioner, researcher and educator she explores the ethical and material dimensions of our relationship with nature. Julia's interests bridge art, science and eco literacy and include critical, speculative and transition design, biomaterials, collaborative making and embodied cognition. As designer in residence at the Victoria and Albert Museum in 2013, she founded the Department of Seaweed, a community exploring the marine organism's potential as a design material with a regenerative eco-systemic impact.

She holds a PhD from the Royal College of Art, London. Among many other projects, she creates sculptures made of seaweed that have been shown globally, for instance at MoMA New York, the World Economic Forum, the 23rd Biennale of Sydney, the 2023 Busan Biennale in South Korea and the Frankfurter Kunstverein in Germany.

Ville Aslak Raasakka is a Helsinki-based Finnish composer and sound artist specialized in ecology. His works incorporate field recordings from coal power plants, coal mines, oil rigs, forests, trees, insects, plants and underwater sites.  He is currently working with bioacoustics and composing in cooperation with biologists.

His works are performed by the Klangforum Wien, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra and Mivos Quartet at festivals including Eclat, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival and June in Buffalo.

Raasakka works as a part-time lecturer in composition at the Sibelius Academy (Helsinki), where he researches and teaches ecological practices.He is currently finishing his Doctoral degree at the Sibelius Academy, and is a research member of the Critical Academy in the University of the Arts Helsinki.

Lefebvre Zisswiller is a French duo of visual artists and filmmakers based in Strasbourg. Nicolas Lefebvre studied at the École du Louvre and HEAR Strasbourg, while Camille Zisswiller studied at the University of Strasbourg and ENSAV-La Cambre in Brussels. In 2019, they joined Le Fresnoy-Studio National des Arts Contemporains. Their multidisciplinary practice blends cinema, video, drawing, photography, and traditional craft techniques.

The duo has recently been invited to develop their work and exhibit both in France and internationally, including at the Xu Yuan Center in Beijing, the Łaźnia Center for Contemporary Art in Gdańsk, as part of an incubation program for the French Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, at La Regionale, and in festivals such as the Festival des Cinémas Différents et Expérimentaux de Paris (FCDE) and the Imagine Science Film Festival (ISFF) in New York.

Kristina Õllek is a visual artist based in Tallinn, Estonia. Working with photography, video, installation, and microbial and chemical processes, she explores aquatic ecosystems, geological matter, and human-altered environments through a research-based yet speculative approach. Her practice often focuses on marine habitats and emerging technologies, along with their geopolitical and ecological implications. Over the past seven years, her work has delved into deep-sea ecosystems, Baltic hypoxic zones, and organisms like cyanobacteria and filter feeders.

Õllek investigates the boundary between the natural and synthetic, questioning materiality and visual perception in an era of advanced, manipulative technology. Her work is often site-sensitive, analyzing exhibition formats—from museums to online spaces—and the politics of display.

She holds BA (2013) and MA (2016) degrees from the Estonian Academy of Arts and studied at Kunsthochschule Berlin-Weissensee and Piet Zwart Institute. Õllek has received the Estonian Academy of Arts Young Artist Prize twice and was awarded a 3-year artist grant in 2023. She co-founded artist-run space Rundum (2013–2018). Her work has been exhibited widely, including at Kai Art Center, KUMU, Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, Fotomuseum Winterthur, and Benaki Museum, and is part of collections such as the Estonian Art Museum, Fotomuseum Winterthur, and the European Central Bank.