Publisert 22.05.2025
The Nordic Noir exhibition at SIC in Helsinki, Finland includes works by Norwegian artists and is on view between 10 May–15 June 2025.
Embracing its setting in the long-disused waiting room of a railway station, Nordic Noir seeks to explore themes of dystopian familiarity; when horror and the uncanny emerge from what is known, and most intimate to us. Artists Fabienne Audéoud, Emanuele Marcuccio and Marc Asekhame, Erkki Pirtola, Hanna Rochereau, Kaare Ruud, and Matilde Westavik Gaustad each explore how the mundane and the unusual might intersect and intertwine through their distinct and collaborative artistic practices.
Through the artworks presented here, the exhibition asks a series of questions around forms of the habitual; what shadows, or echoes, linger behind the quotidian, and the domestic. Drawing from German theorist Walter Benjamin’s ruminations on city life in the 19th century, the exhibition poses the interior spaces of buildings as encapsulating their own detective story.
The exhibition is curated by Sini Rinne-Kanto, a Finnish curator, researcher, and doctoral candidate based in Paris and a co-founder of The Community. In the autumn of 2024, Rinne-Kanto participated in the curator programme of the art festival Trondheim Open with support from the Finnish-Norwegian Cultural Institute. There, she met Norwegian visual artist Matilde Westavik Gaustad, whom she invited to the Nordic Noir exhibition. The exhibition also includes works by Norwegian sculptor Kaare Ruud.
Matilde Westavik Gaustad (b. 1987) is a visual artist based in Trondheim. She holds a master’s degree from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen (2016). Working primarily with hand-woven tapestry and video, Gaustad explores the strange—and at times unsettling—boundaries and relationships between humans, animals, and technology.
Kaare Ruud (b. 1993, Gausdal) lives and works in Oslo. He graduated with an MFA from the Oslo National Academy of the Arts in 2020. Ruud’s artistic practice primarily focuses on sculptural interventions and works in a range of diverse and unconventional materials.
Read more about the exhibition on SIC’s homepage.
Read our interview with Sini Rinne-Kanto here.