Art Ii Biennial 2018
Curators
Anastasia Patsey
Anastasia Patsey is a curator based in St Petersburg, Russia, who works internationally. She graduated from the Saint Petersburg State Stieglitz Art Academy (Department of History and Theory of Visual Arts) and holds a dual MA in curatorial studies from Saint Petersburg State University and Bard College, NY. Since 2012 she has been a permanent member of the curatorial team at Pushkinskaya-10 – the oldest non-governmental cultural institution in Russia, founded in 1989.
She also works as an independent curator in collaboration with art institutions in Russia and abroad. In 2013 Patsey founded the 2,04 gallery, which functions as a shared art laboratory and project incubator for emerging art professionals. She is co-founder and board member of the Paideia School for the Interpretation of Contemporary Art, launched in 2014. Since 2012 she has been the director of the St Petersburg International Art Residency (SPAR), which regularly hosts
interdisciplinary art professionals from all over the world. In the autumn of 2015, Patsey was offered the position of director at St Petersburg’s Museum of Non-Conformist Art (MoNA), which she currently holds. She is regularly invited as a guest lecturer by the National Research University Higher School of Economics, the Pushkin Leningrad State University and the St Petersburg State Polytechnic University.
Antti Tenetz
Antti Tenetz is a visual artist. His works are situated at the interface between media arts, activism, bio arts and urban art. In his works he combines and fearlessly uses different forms of expression, media, technological platforms and materials. His focus is on multi-disciplinary and multi-artistic cooperation between art and science, he often uses technologies such as drones and satellite tracking, and he has made digital representations of animal sensory systems.
Tenetz approaches and uses his art across these hybrid systems to bring new themes to discussions across the arts and science concerning experience, our relationships with nature, privacy, law, landscape and natural values, other species, and the formation, respect and survival of our living space. Tenetz is one of the founders and the head of the curatorial team for Pohjavirta, the Finnish Cultural Foundations project.
He currently works as a regional artist of biological arts for the Art Promotion Centre of Finland. Tenetz’s works and cooperation projects have been exhibited in Finland and internationally, including at the Istanbul Biennale parallel programme (2017); Tate Exchange at the Tate Modern, London (2017); Venice Biennale (2013-2015); Lumipalloefekti exhibitions, X-Border, ISEA Istanbul, Science Gallery, Pan-Barentz, and e-mobiLArt. He has also won three national snow-sculpting competitions.
Tenetz is a founding member of the Subzero group (2012), he leads the Public Art Purchase Committee, he is a member of the board of the Northern Osthrobothnia Cultural Fund, and he was chair of the board of the Finnish Bioart Society between 2011 and 2013.
Merja Briñón
Merja Briñón is an arts manager and visual artist who lives and works in Ii, Finland and Madrid, Spain. Currently she is an artistic director for Art Ii Biennial and an executive director of KulttuuriKauppila Art Centre. Previously she has worked as a regional artist at Arts Promotion Centre Finland and as an arts manager at the Artists’ Association of Lapland. She holds an MA in arts management from the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki.
In her artistic work, Merja Briñón explores different phenomena such as perceptions of time, the space state between the visible and invisible world, liminality, and the aesthetics of silence and emptiness. She is currently studying for a doctorate at the Faculty of Arts at the University of Lapland.
She has also studied visual arts at Universidad de La Laguna, Spain, and qualified as a graphic artist and illustrator from Kuopio Academy of Design. Her works have been displayed in several national and international solo and group exhibitions.
Artists
See also
Art Ii Biennial 2024
Concept - Fire Unbound
Art Ii Biennial 2022
The theme of the 2022 Art Ii Biennial was “In the Air”. The biennial presented a compilation of 14 artworks, which addressed issues related to air as well as introduced new insights and methods to dealing with the element that surrounds us.
Art Ii Biennial 2020
The Finnish word maa means earth, but also country, dirt, ground, land soil, and terrain. The word also refers to the world. The concept of the Art Ii Biennial 2020 encompasses all these aspects of the earth and specifically the knowledge they possess.
Art Ii Biennial 2016
The Art Ii Biennial 2016 studied interlinkages between environmental art and the use of natural materials in the Sámi crafts tradition; the theme was “The Poetics of Material”. The event aimed to create new suggestions for how traditional Sámi livelihoods and Sámi identities could be conceived in our modern global economy and politics. Artists were chosen for this biennial on the basis of how connectedness to nature was manifest in their work.
Art Ii Biennial 2014
The theme of the Art Ii Biennial 2014, “Landscapes of Mind and Language”, explored the interaction among language, mind, culture and environment. This biennial challenged the artists, urging them to research into their language and mind with the means of environmental art.
Art Ii Biennial 2012
Along with Art Ii Biennial 2012, Ii Municipality obtained a unique Environmental Art Park which binds together the environmental art in Wanha Hamina and at KulttuuriKauppila Art Centre. The art of that biennial was prepared for the Environmental Art Park, which is located along nelostie, the national road No. 4, on the banks of the picturesque River Ii at the cape Koskiniemi. The Environmental Art Park forms a recreational area for residents and travelers alike. The partners made a preliminarily selection of artists working in their regions, and the main curator of the Art Ii Biennale, Timo Jokela, made the final choice of the artists who were to be invited to the exhibition.
Art Ii Biennial 2010
The theme for the second Art Ii Bienniale, held in 2010, was Periphery. That theme aroused a lively debate which was further inspired by the conference lecture by the critic Otso Kantokorpi. The participation of the sensational conceptual artist Lars Vilks kindled a great amount of media buzz, particularly because he made his appearance with the Finnish Security Police; another instigator of media buzz was the attempted burning of Vilks’ piece, called Asema (Ii Tower), during the Midsummer festivities.
Art Ii Biennial 2008
The theme for the first Art Ii Biennial, held in Ii in 2008, was Northern environmental art – structures and impact. The artists represented very different forms of northern environmental art, and during the ten-day workshop, they and their assistants produced pieces that were eventually placed in famous cultural heritage sites in the town of Ii: the old harbor and trading place Wanha Hamina and the KulttuuriKauppila Art Centre. The participation of Sir Alfio Bonanno, a legendary figure in land art and nature installations, made this Art Ii Biennal an exhibition with international significance.