2025: Strengthening networks and nurturing long-term relationships

As we prepare to say goodbye to 2025, we look back with gratitude for the year and the projects we’ve realised together with our partners.

Throughout the year, the Finnish–Norwegian Cultural Institute has supported and facilitated cultural exchange across Finland, Norway, and Sápmi. We’ve continued to nurture our ongoing collaborations and formed new partnerships. Our role as a bridge-builder has grown stronger, reflected in our active commitment to fostering international networks.

“Long-term collaboration emerges when cultural professionals and practitioners have meaningful places to meet. Such meetings often spark new initiatives that can grow into lasting collaborations between the parties involved,” says Pauliina Gauffin, the institute’s director.

“At the same time, geopolitical tensions, unpredictability and increasing polarisation in society are having an impact on the entire arts and culture sector. Cuts targeting the cultural sector and limited resources pose significant challenges to the whole field, which is why we must support one another more than ever before. Art and culture have the power to bring people together and foster mutual understanding across languages, borders, and perspectives.”

In 2025, we collaborated with 34 partners to realise and support over 20 projects involving 70 artists and cultural practitioners and reaching an audience of 19,000. We would like to extend our warmest thanks to all our partners, collaborators, funders and audiences for an inspiring and impactful year. We wish you all a relaxing holiday season!

Below, you can take a look at some highlights from our programme:

Residencies

The Institute aims to improve opportunities for Finnish and Finland-based cultural professionals to work for longer periods in Norway. We facilitate extended work stays and foster opportunities for more extensive and long-term collaboration between organisations, artists, and curators. In 2025, we were able to offer five residencies for artists and cultural practitioners. One of these took place in Finland for the first time, with FINNO supporting the participation of two Norway-based artists.

AiR residency: Lada Suomenrinne, Kirkenes, January 2025
Artist in Residence: Lada Suomenrinne
Partner: Pikene på Broen

Recovery Laboratory, Porsgrunn, May – June 2025
Artists in residence: Miradonna Sirkka, Aleksi Kinnunen, Alpi Vaalaja, and Bek Berger
Partner: Porsgrunn International Theatre Festival

Residency for performing artists, Hammerfest, September 2025
Artists in residence: Antonia Atarah, Johanna Karlberg, Alen Nsambu & Nicholas “Leissi” Rehn
Partners: Davvi – Centre for performing arts and the Swedish Cultural Foundation

Bioart Society: Field_Notes, Kilpisjärvi, September 2025
Artists in residence: Elina Waage Mikalsen & Taylor Alaina Liebenstein Smith
Partner: Bioart Society

PRAKSIS, Oslo, November 2025
Artists in residence: Felicia Hedman
Partners: PRAKSIS, Goethe Institute

Expert visits

The institute collaborates with other organisations to organise expert visits and visitor programs. The aim is to promote both immediate and long-term opportunities for collaboration. Maintaining the expertise and professionalism of actors working at an international level requires continuous interaction and networking. Each meeting can lay the foundation for new projects, guest performances or exhibitions, and contributes to building lasting relationships and a stronger international network in the field of art and culture.

Helsinki Biennale, Helsinki, June 2025
Expert: Sarah Loofkovsky, Kunstnernes Hus
Partner: Frame Finland

Oulu2026 & PhotoNorth, Oulu, June 2025
Expert: Amund Sjølien, Nordting
Partner: PhotoNorth

Nordic Culture Forum, Helsinki, June 2025
Experts: Kristine Wessel & Tina Skedsmo, Mesén
Partner: Mesén

Tampere Theatre Festival, Tampere, August 2025
Experts: Ingrid Ellestad, Bergen International Theatre & Hilde Guri Bohlin, Ibsen Scope
Partners: Tampere Theatre Festival, BIT Teatergarasjen, and Ibsen Theatre

HEL Treats, Helsinki, August 2025
Expert: Birgit Berndt, CODA
Partners: CODA – International Dance Festival & Cirkus & Dance Finland

Positioning symposium, Helsinki, September 2025
Expert: Kjersti Solbakken, Bergen Kunsthall
Partner: Bergen Kunsthall

NORDIK Conference, Helsinki, October 2025
Experts: Åsne Kummeneje Mellem, Gyrid Øyen & Tarja Salmela

Indigenous Drag Excellence – New York City, USA

The international Indigenous Drag Excellence XXL show premiered at the Riddu Riđđu indigenous festival in 2024, and was the first of its kind in Sápmi. It brought together artists from Australia, Canada, and the Finnish part of Sápmi: Aunty Tamara, Feather Talia, Randy River, and Ritni Tears. In February 2025, the project traveled to New York in collaboration with the Finnish-Cultural Institute in New York, Riddu Riđđu, Leslie Lohman Museum, and the Finnish-Norwegian Cultural Institute. 

The performance took place at the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art, an art museum dedicated to artistic exploration through multifaceted queer perspectives. This was followed by a roundtable conversation with the artists about queer Indigenous joy, the fluidity of gender expression and sexuality through art and storytelling, and methodologies for honouring Indigenous experience.

The project was covered by the PAPER magazine.

Lada Suomenrinne – Emergency Weather

Artist Lada Suomenrinne was invited to participate in the Artist-in-Residence (AiR) program hosted by the curator collective Pikene på Broen in Kirkenes.

Organized in collaboration with the Finnish-Norwegian Cultural Institute, the opportunity included residency periods in October 2024 and 2025January. The art project was exhibited as part of the festival exhibition at Barents Spektakel in February 2025.

Emergency Weather is a visual narrative about returning to a remote village — one that is home. This narrative is woven together by the presence of ancestors, the shifting weather, and the emergency of knowledge. The images explore the isolation of information, seeking to reveal what the landscape itself can communicate.

Hakapik – an art critique web magazine – published an interview with artist Lada Suomenrinne in October 2025. In the interview Suomenrinne recounts their experiences working internationally and as a Sámi artist, opportunities for exhibiting in Sápmi, and the ethics of photographic art.

Indigenous Drag Excellence and Emergency Weather were realised as part of pARTir, a collaborative initiative of the Finnish cultural and academic institutes promoting sustainable international mobility in 2024 and 2025. pARTir was funded by the European Union’s Next Generation EU initiative. They were also part of the institute’s program NORD – Cultural Bridges, that aims to strengthen networks and activities between cultural actors in Northern Norway, Northern Finland and Sápmi.

Silent film concert: Med ackja och ren i Inka Läntas vinterland

Med ackja och ren i Inka Läntas vinterland (Gierrisij ja hiergij Lenta Iŋŋgá dálvveednamin) is a hybrid documentary consisting of both documentary scenes and directed scenes. While the story is fictional, the characters appear under their real names. Made in 1926 by Erik Bergström, the film depicts the lives of the Saami people in northern Sweden in the 1920s. The silent film concert project was commissioned by the Tromsø International Film Festival (TIFF), who invited Sami musicians from the Barents region to leave their mark on the film through new music. The film is accompanied by live music from artists Lávre Johan Eira, Hildá Länsman, Tuomas Norvio and Svante Henryson.

The project has been supported through the institute’s program NORD – Cultural Bridges.

Tze Yeung Ho – Nara Opera

Tze Yeung’s music is created at the crossroads of understanding, reflecting his multilingual upbringing. Working with Scandinavian, Finno-Ugric and Chinese poetry and prose, his music treads on the fragile landscapes of (mis)communication through (un)spoken words.

In March this year, Tze Yeung Ho’s new work, Nara Opera, premiered in Bergen at the Borealis Festival. Nara is a chamber opera that explores power and ambiguity through the complex story of Empress Dowager Cixi – hailed as both a modernist and a tyrant.

Watch our interview with Tze.

The Finnish-Norwegian Cultural Institute supported the festival performances at Borealis.

Hans Rosenström – Broken Chord

Broken Chord was a sound installation by Hans Rosenström consisting of semi-reflective glass panels and human voices. The audience could experience the sound installation at Atelier Nord, where it was also part of the Ultima Festival program.

In Broken Chord, Hans Rosenström was interested in the fleeting, almost organic nature of the human voice, contrasted with the austere, architectural structures of the reflective glass panels. In the installation, the glass acted as a barrier between two worlds, the inner and the outer, while the voice was a vessel that penetrated these spheres.

Read our interview with Hans.

The exhibition was supported by The Finnish-Norwegian Cultural Institute, the Swedish Cultural Foundation, the Municipality of Oslo and the Arts Council of Norway.