Curators

Ekaterina Sharova is an art historian and a curator of the Arctic Art Forum (Arkhangelsk, Russia), a leading meeting place for contemporary art and interdisciplinary experiments in Euro-Arctic Russia. She graduated from an experimental Faculty of Humanities at the Pomor State University in Arkhangelsk in 2004 and received a Master’s Degree in Art History from the University of Oslo in 2012. 

Sharova has been curating and co-curating projects for Kunsthall Stavanger, Kunstnernes Hus, Arctic Arts Festival, Barents Spektakel, and Arctic Arts Summit.  She has written essays and given talks on Northern Russian art for Garage Triennial of Russian Contemporary Art (2017) and NEMOSKVA (2018). She has taught at Northern (Arctic) Federal University and was a guest lecturer at the University of Lapland and Oslo National Academy of the Arts.

Sharova has been an advisor for Sakahàn: International Indigenous Art exhibition at the National Gallery of Canada and served as an expert for several national art competitions in Russia. Her curatorial projects focus on embodied knowledge, decentralization of the cultural capital, and redesigning the invisible. 

Dr. Maria Huhmarniemi is an artist and a teacher in the University of Lapland, Faculty of Art and Design. In her work as a visual artist, she engages with questions concerning the North and environmental issues such as the relationship between people and nature and environmental responsibility. In her artistic practice she is focused on socially and environmentally engaged art.

As a researcher, she is interested in political contemporary art and education for sustainability through art. In her Doctoral theses (2016) she developed transdisciplinary collaboration of artists and researchers. The motive was to find out how contemporary artists can participate in local discussions on environmental politics through art. Huhmarniemi has also curated international exhibitions and published multiple research articles.