Curators
Presenting the international curatorial team of the Art Ii Biennial 2026 / Solastalgia
Heta Kaisto
Heta Kaisto (b. 1984, Ii) is an art historian, writer, and curator who works broadly across the field of art. Her research and curatorial practice explore sensory historiography and the process of human emotions and perceptions. In her curatorial process Heta Kaisto often works to intertwine different contemporary techniques and methods alongside with archives and historical persepectives. Heta is currently working on her PhD, along these themes. At the moment she is working as the director of Art Collection Kirpilä.
“In the exhibition Solastalgia I approache the environmental and site-specific art as a mediator of collective memory and emotion. The environment and landscape are examined in layers: places are revisited, their damages handled with care, dams are opened. Alongside grief, the exhibition gives rise to consolation, silence, and the sublime.”
Art Ii Biennial / Solastalgia is the second international biennial Heta has curated. She was also the curator at Rauma Triennale together with Teemu Mäki.
Kuvaaja Hanna Koikkalainen
Timo Toots and Mari-Liis Rebane
In 2026, the Art Ii Biennial collaborates with the Estonian residency center Maajaam and its outdoor technological art exhibition concept Wild Bits, which broadens the inquiries of landscape and change into the realm of media and ecological imagination.
Wild Bits is represented by the co-curators and operators of the technological art farm Maajaam , artists Timo Toots and Mari-Liis Rebane. They bring in their experience and expertise to create immersive art works that blur the boundaries between environment, technology, and human perception. They envision the Wild Bits concept as a living laboratory — a space where artists, technologists, and participants come together to explore how cutting-edge art practices can coexist with the rhythms of the natural world.
“Positioned directly in the landscape, the selected works inhabit a threshold between technological invention and environmental art, opening subtle pathways for perceiving and communicating with the living world around us. Attuned to the fragility and change at the heart of solastalgia, we invite viewers to notice the subtle shifts in their surroundings and to rethink their relationship with the more-than-human world — where memory, place, and new possibilities meet.”
Kuvaaja Jaani Föhr
The 10th edition of the environmental art exhibition Art Ii Biennial unfolds around the theme of solastalgia. Art Ii Biennial / Solastalgia engages with the relationship between humans and the landscape – the intergenerational bonds of landscape, and the question of what it means to mourn one’s familiar surroundings — and to be transformed along with them.
Art Ii Biennial in Ii, June 11th to July 31st 2026. Opening June 11. at 5PM at the Old Workers Hall (Työväentalo.)