Sini Rinne-Kanto on curating and her research on Kalervo Palsa and Edvard Munch

Sini Rinne-Kanto is a Finnish curator, researcher, and doctoral candidate based in Paris. Her research interests include interiors and domesticity, collective identities and feminist practices, socio-cultural narratives, and modernist histories. She has extensive experience of galleries, institutions, and non-profit art spaces. Rinne-Kanto is a co-founder of The Community, and her recent curatorial projects include the exhibitions Houses of Tove Jansson (Paris, 2023) and AllTogether (Paris and Venice, 2022), as well as the inaugural edition of the Salon by NADA & The Community art fair (2024). She was guest curator of the Surprise Guest exhibition at the 2024 Fiskars Village Art & Design Biennale.

In August this year, Rinne-Kanto spent two weeks in Åsgårdstrand as part of the Researcher in Residence Programme (RiR) where she worked on her project From Lykkehuset to Getsemane, which explores the connections between two Nordic painters, Kalervo Palsa (1947-1987) and Edvard Munch (1863-1944). Palsa, born in post-war Finnish Lapland, often mentioned Edvard Munch as one of his major artistic influences.

This week we’re delighted to welcome Rinne-Kanto back to Norway for the Trondheim Open, a festival and meeting place for artists, audiences, and cultural practitioners.

We had the pleasure of asking Rinne-Kanto a few questions about what inspired her to become a curator, about her time in Åsgårdstrand, and much more.

What inspired you to pursue a career as a curator, and what discourses and themes are you currently exploring in your work?

After completing my master’s in arts management at Sciences Po Paris, I worked in a publishing house and art galleries. Soon after entering the art field, I became interested in organising exhibitions and events with my friends. At that time, around the mid-2010s, there weren’t many alternative or independent art spaces in the Parisian contemporary art landscape. My motivation to curate and organise exhibitions was probably born as a reaction to this – an attempt to articulate and create new opportunities for artists and exhibitions in the liminal, yet-to-be-created spaces.

I co-founded my first project space with two friends in 2015, La Plage, a vitrine space in the centre of Paris. The following year, I co-founded the art collective The Community. I’ve always been interested in the constantly evolving contemporary art landscape and its structures while experimenting with new curatorial platforms and models.

The curatorial themes that drive my work today are related to notions of domesticity, design, modernity, and feminism, which also reflect my academic research revolving around post-war Nordic design histories.

In August this year you participated in a residency programme in Åsgårdstrand, where Edvard Munch (1863-1944) spent many of his summers. Many of his masterpieces were inspired by the surroundings. How was your residency experience in Åsgårdstrand?

The residency allowed me to complete a phase of a research project, so it was enriching and valuable in many ways. During the second week of my residency, I gave a talk about the research at Haugar Art Museum near Åsgårdstrand. Having a discussion about Palsa, whose work remains somewhat unknown in the international context, felt extremely important. I began researching Palsa a few years ago with Sabrina Tamar, a New York-based curator and writer, and the research will certainly continue in new directions from here.

It was also wonderful to make new connections in the Norwegian art scene, where I hadn’t spent much time before in a professional capacity. Aside from making important progress in my research and being able to give a public presentation and hold a discussion on it, it was exciting to walk through the narrow, picturesque streets and visit the places where Munch painted many of his key works.

You’ve researched the Finnish painter Kalervo Palsa (1947-1987) and during your residency you explored the connections between Palsa and Munch. In your opinion, what were the most interesting observations you made during your research on the connection between Palsa and Munch?



Throughout his life, Kalervo Palsa actively studied the lives of historical figures, borrowing from and comparing his own life to those of various artists and writers such as Vincent van Gogh, August Strindberg, Otto Dix, and Edvard Munch. Their presence is woven throughout his work in complex ways, both overt and hidden. Palsa mentioned Munch in several of his diary entries and made paintings that directly referenced the Norwegian painter.

There were many links between the two artists: existential themes that drove their creative output, as well as painterly motifs and art historical influences. Both artists were absolute, monomaniacal, dedicated, and extremely solitary. They dealt with the fundamental questions of existence: death, love, longing, jealousy, and madness, and sought to bring to light the essential theme of the precarious condition of man in modern society.

While the connections between their works are rich, I was particularly struck by the series of works by the two that depict domestic spaces and interiors dealing with time, eternity, and death, which in my research I call “Nordic Landscapes of Psychological Interiors”. In these domestic spaces, solitary figures inhabit a kind of domestic no-man’s land in sparsely decorated rooms. Palsa’s and Munch’s art became a space for psychological, almost psychoanalytical, exploration that allowed them to express the complex feelings they experienced in their interpersonal relationships.

During your time in Norway, you also visited museums and galleries and gained insight into the Norwegian art and culture scene. What is your impression of the Norwegian art and cultural field?

In addition to spending time in the village of Åsgårdstrand and working with the Haugar art museum, I was very excited to explore the local art scene, visit museums and institutions, and discover the vibrant and rapidly changing art scene in Norway. The proximity of Oslo and the easy train ride between the capital and the town of Åsgårdstrand gave me flexibility in my residency, allowing me to spend time among the capital’s amazing museums and collections. It feels like the scene is seeing some exciting times, and so much is happening in the country right now: new museums, institutions, and galleries are opening at an historic rate. It was great to see that these new cultural venues aren’t just concentrated in the capital, but really spread across the country, which isn’t always the case elsewhere.

You’re returning to Norway to visit the Trondheim Open at the beginning of November. The Trondheim Open is an art festival, where more than a hundred of the region’s artists open their doors and meet the public. What are your expectations for your visit?

This will be my first time in Trondheim, and I’m looking forward to discovering the local art scene, which seems to be very vibrant! I’m also looking forward to visiting the local museums and institutions, such as Kunsthalle Trondheim and Trondheim Kunstmuseet. I’m already impressed by the number of cultural activities and artists’ studios in the city! The concept of the Trondheim Open is wonderful and really seems to be based on collaboration and dialogue, which are two of the fundamental values for building lasting artistic collaborations in these trying times.

Do you have any other plans for the future that you would like to tell us about?

I’ve just finished working on the inaugural edition of the Salon by NADA & The Community, a new art fair taking place alongside other fairs in Paris during the vibrant Art Week. The collaborative model brings together the best of contemporary art from NADA’s network of galleries and The Community’s network of non-profit arts organisations in a four-day programme at the intersection of art, music, and publishing. This new partnership builds on The Community’s Salon de Normandy, which was organised in 2019 and 2020. Next, I’ll be focusing on my doctoral research and preparing a group exhibition to be held at SIC Gallery in Helsinki in May 2025.

The two-week residency in Åsgårdstrand in August was a collaboration between Haugar Art Museum and The Finnish-Norwegian Cultural Institute. The institute is supporting Rinne-Kanto’s participation in the Trondheim Open.