Artists

Meet the artists taking part in this year’s project: Mia Tamme from Estonia, Weronika Zalewska from Poland, Rasa Weber from Germany, Laure Vigna from France and Noora Sandgren and Robert Fusco from Finland.
  • Mia Tamme

    Mia Tamme is an artist, writer, filmmaker, and community organiser based in Tallinn, Estonia. Working across textiles, moving image, writing, and performance, her research-based practice drifts between the Baltic Sea, folk traditions, institutional archives, and personal memory. Drawing from practices such as weaving, sailing, fishing, and storytelling, she explores how queer and wayward histories are carried through voices, bodies, objects, and folk art.

    Her work has been shown at institutions including KUMU Art Museum and EKKM. She has participated in the Helsinki International Artist Programme residency and studied at the Dutch Art Institute. Mia organises reading groups, storytelling events, sauna days, and other collective gatherings.

    Mia Tamme © Derek MF Di Fabio © Derek MF Di Fabio

  • Weronika Zalewska

    Weronika Zalewska is a visual artist, researcher and poet working in a variety of media: video, written word, sound, pedagogy/participation. Her art is focused on socio-economic transformations and their impact on both cultural and ecological landscapes. She teaches at Social Film Studio at Academy of Art in Szczecin alongside Karolina Breguła. Zalewska graduated from the Faculty of Media Art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw and Autonomous Design at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts (KASK) in Ghent, Belgium. She also studied art praxis at the Dutch Art Institute.

    Her works have been shown at the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, Arsenał Gallery in Białystok, Zachęta – National Gallery of Art in Warsaw, the Vilnius Biennial of Performance Art and HER Docs Festival. She is representing Poland at the Malta Biennale 2026 with her project Archive of Hesitations. She sometimes curates experimental film and translates, e.g. for Pamoja Press and HELA Press. She often works in artistic/curatorial duos with dear friends – Marta Romankiv, Ewelina Węgiel and Dominika Wasilewska.

    Weronika Zalewska © Weronika Zalewska © Weronika Zalewska

  • Rasa Weber

    Rasa Weber is an experimental designer, researcher, and diver exploring practice-based research on the intersection of critical ecology and anthropogenic environmental change. Her work integrates design, materials research, biology, and anthropology, with a strong narrative approach and a critical ecological perspective. She coined the term Sympoietic Design, reflecting a relational eco-social shift in design. The ocean serves as a central focus in her design research, particularly in the context of queer ecological figurations. Her research project, SymbiOcean, explores artificial reefs as cultural-natural contact zones.

    She is a lecturer at Zurich University of the Arts and research associate at Humboldt University's Matters of Activity cluster. As part of the Swiss National Science Foundation's Interfacing the Ocean project, she merges design, marine biology, and anthropology. Weber teaches, exhibits and collaborates internationally, advancing ecological design discourse. Her works have been awarded with the Ecodesign Award, German Design Award (nomination) and were exhibited in New York, Toronto, Osaka, Milan and London.

    Rasa Weber © Hanna Wiedemann © Hanna Wiedemann

  • Laure Vigna

    Laure Vigna is an artist and a practice-based researcher based in Marseille, France. She holds an MA in Art & Ecology from Goldsmiths, University of London (2022), and an MFA from École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Lyon (2008) after completing an exchange in Art History at Concordia University in Montreal (2005 06). She is currently completing a training program as a herbalist at the École Lyonnaise de Plantes Médicinales.

    Her practice lies at the intersection of life sciences, science and technology studies, environmental studies, and the history of science. Rooted in research and experimentation, she approaches matter as a witness, interrogating material flows, displacement, and toxicity. Her research examines microbial legacies and their memorial and archival potential. She seeks to reveal the invisible dynamics of matter and chemical languages as political tools by tracing ecological entanglements between soil and water microbiology, human and non-human bodies, in a constant state of tension with toxicity. Her research approaches sculpture as a sensitive mediator capable of actively sensing its environment and archiving transformations.

    Her work has been featured internationally, including at LAM, Budapest (2025–26); RADIUS CCA, Delft (2025); Le Plateau - FRAC Île-de-France, Paris (2024); LAAC, Dunkirk, for the second edition of the Art and Industry Triennial (2023–24); CIAP Vassivière, Beaumont-du-Lac (2021); MO.CO Panacée, Montpellier (2020); Rogaland Kunstsenter, Stavanger (2017); Mon Chéri, Brussels (2017)

    Laure Vigna © Leila El-Kayem © Leila El-Kayem

  • Noora Sandgren

    Noora Sandgren is a visual artist based in Helsinki. Her work involves photography and its bendings, text, installation and performative practices. In her site-sensitive artistic research she explores questions related to multispecies co-existence and embodied knowledge creation. Her practice is rooted in the home garden of Hiidenvesi and involves slowness, observation and foraging. She often shares authorship of the works with the weather and different forms of life such as microbial dwellers of garden compost or water ecosystems.

    Sandgrens art has been exhibited widely including Helsinki Arthall, Helsinki Art Museum, The Finnish Museum of Photography in Helsinki, Chappe Museum, The Pärnu Town Hall Gallery, BOM Gallery in Birmingham, Kunshaus Wiesbaden in Germany. Her recent artwork Water Bodies (2026) belongs to HAM museum´s public art collection and solo exhibition SymSym (2026) took place at the Gallery Augusta HIAP Suomenlinna.

    She graduated with an MA in Photography at the Aalto University, where she also studied in the MA programme of Art Education. She holds a BA in Social Psychology at the University of Helsinki and is part of the Harakka artist´s association, the Bioart Society and a board member of the Photographic Artist´s Association. Occasionally she also works as an art educator in various contexts.

    Noora Sandgren © Lennart Sandgren © Lennart Sandgren

  • Roberto Fusco

    Roberto Fusco is a media artist based in Helsinki, Finland. Working with custom sensors, data collection, and simulation, he explores how observation becomes a form of participation in environmental phenomena. His practice develops feedback systems between human bodies and marine environments — transforming invisible ecological processes such as eutrophication, deoxygenation, and hypoxia into tangible, felt experiences through sound, installation, and audiovisual performance.

    His work navigates the boundary between scientific and embodied modes of knowing. Simulation serves as a method for investigating natural phenomena, while the embodied perspective drives that inquiry toward poetic and speculative scenarios — revealing the complexity and unpredictability of the material world beyond what is computable. The Baltic Sea serves as both site and collaborator across his practice.

    He holds a Master of Science in Electronic Engineering from Roma Tre University, a Master of Philosophy in Music and Media Technology, and a Doctor of Science in Technology from Aalto University, and works as a technician in Art and Technology at the Academy of Fine Arts Helsinki (Uniarts). Fusco is currently pursuing a second doctoral degree at Aalto University, where his artistic research investigates technology-mediated participation in Baltic Sea ecosystems through embodied practice and material intelligence research.

    Since 2010, his installations and audiovisual performances have been presented at festivals including Ars Electronica, Currents New Media (USA), Aavistus, ANTI Festival, Blooming (ITA), LUX Helsinki, Mänttä Art Festival, NIME, RIXC (LT), Borealis (NO), and Plektrum (EE), and in galleries including Huuto, Kuopio Art Museum, Porvoon Taidehalli, Titanik, MUU Galleria (FI), the Science Gallery (IE), and Eyebeam (NY, USA).

    Roberto Fusco © Malin Gustavsson © Malin Gustavsson