Gifts from the Sentient Forest Cohort (2024-26)
Our distinguished two-year cohort of artists, performers, writers, activists, biologists, and researchers explores the possibilities of creative practice as a means to engage with forest sentience in Northern Finland. In 2024, fourteen cohort members, along with the project coordinators, bring their expertise, skill, and imagination to Äkäslompolo, Lapland, during two residential retreats. The village of Äkäslompolo is close to Pallas-Yllästunturi National Park, the third largest of its kind in Finland and popular for its extensive hiking trail network.
Cohort Member
Dr Annette Arlander
Annette Arlander, DA, is an artist, researcher and a pedagogue, former professor in performance art and theory at University of the Arts Helsinki and at Stockholm University of the Arts. Currently she is visiting researcher at Academy of Fine Arts, University of the Arts Helsinki with the artistic research project 'Pondering with Pines'. Her research interests include artistic research, performance-as-research and the environment. Her artwork moves in the border zone between performance art, media art and environmental art. Her most recent book is Performing and Thinking with Trees (2022).
For more information, see https://annettearlander.com
Cohort Member
Evgenia Emets
Evgenia Emets is an international artist poet, and the Founder of Eternal Forest Global. She works with forest ecology and community creating visual art, films, artist’s books, performances, forest art trails and large-scale ecological artworks in the form of forest sanctuaries. Eternal Forest (launched in 2018), an ongoing multidisciplinary project, marks an integration of ecological thinking into her art. Eternal Forest is creating a network of 1,000 forest sanctuaries to be protected for 1,000 years through art and community. Recent solo shows: Eternal Forest, MUHNAC (2022); Forest Time, Estufa Fria de Lisboa and Monsanto Forest Park (2023); Rewilding Time, Biodiversity Gallery (2024), Portugal. Evgenia’s visual works and artists’ books are in museums (Stella Art Foundation and MOMA, Russia), libraries (National Poetry Library, London, British Library and Gulbenkian Art Library) and private collections in the UK, Europe, Japan and Russia. For more information, see http://www.evgeniaemets.vision/ and https://eternalforest.earth/
Cohort Member
Zoë Koivu
Zoë Koivu lives on the Arctic Circle in Finland, enjoys outdoor activities and practices (i)photography. Having travelled in the Circumpolar North, she settled down to nurture her family while being a University Teacher at the Language Centre of the University of Lapland, where she is also a Doctoral Researcher in the Faculty of Social Sciences. Her academic background is in Human Geography/Environmental Studies (BA McGill University, Montréal), Multidisciplinary Arctic Studies (Center for Northern Studies, Vermont, USA and Arctic Centre, University of Lapland), Human Geography/Regional Planning with a focus on Arctic Tourism (MSc Oulu University, Finland), and gradual Tourism Research (University of Lapland, Finland). Her interests include traveling with the seasons, proximity tourism, forest bathing, attuning with Nature, cultural and biological phenology, spiritual ecology, visual poetry, soundscapes, and attempting to capture the seasonal spiral with (i)photography (@pzkoivu ).
Cohort Member
Isabella Clarke
Issy Clarke is an independent researcher, broadcast journalist and conservation volunteer based in the UK. She writes on non-human animal cultures and relationships with the more-than-human, particularly free-living Animals and Plants. She enjoys sitting with Trees (and other non-human beings), and being receptive to their wisdom. Her work embraces the factual and scientific, the theoretical and ethical, and the speculative and imaginal.
Cohort Member
Satu Kalliokuusi
Satu Kalliokuusi is a prominent Finnish visual artist who works actively in different parts of Finland and in the international art world. Her art adheres to the critical cutting edge of contemporary art. Kalliokuusi examines glocal themes – at the intersection of the local and global – such as mining disputes and forest policy. Kalliokuusi has dealt with these topics, for example, in the peripheral areas of the Pallas-Yllästunturi National Park, in such a way that art has a national significance. At the same time, the works are current in the field of international environmental political contemporary art. Folklore topics about the connection between human and nature have emerged as a recent theme in Kalliokuusi's visual art, where the difference between human, the rest of nature and nature's spirits has dissolved. Kalliokuusi raises motifs and themes from tradition in the language of contemporary art and in the context of contemporary culture, so that those who experience art have the opportunity to reach a sense of cultural continuity, a connection to our rich cultural heritage. Kalliokuusi deals with this topic in its interesting transcultural situation. Her art is influenced by Estonian culture as well as Eastern Finland and Lapland. Kalliokuusi has been developing her own way of working in fine art for decades, researching natural pigments, among other ecologically sustainable techniques. This approach has become current both with the turn of neomaterialist philosophy and in the context of the art world. Kalliokuusi is an active and renewing visual artist. In addition to this, she works as a curator and, so to speak, as an engine in many projects that renew contemporary art and in communities that bring together actors from the art world and local communities in Finnish and Baltic area - especially in Estonia. For more information, see www.satukalliokuusi.carbonmade.com
Cohort Member
Milja Laine
Milja Laine is a Helsinki based illustrator and visual artist with degrees in contemporary arts and ecology. She has a background in environmental education, and nature connection is at the core of her artistic practices. Since 2012 Laine's illustrations have been published in education materials, magazines and children's books, and her artwork has been exhibited in Helsinki, Koli, Oulu and Madrid. Currently Laine is working on a book about urban plants. For more information about her work, see www.miljalaine.com
Cohort Member
Samin Lee
Samin Lee is a doctoral candidate at Tampere University, focusing on developing and applying an ecocultural lens to theoretical frameworks and illustrating children's sensory ways of learning with more-than-human worlds. Her professional background includes experience as an early childhood educator in Steiner and Reggio-Emilia based classrooms. Despite growing up in a metropolitan city, Samin's ecocultural identity was shaped by childhood experiences in the mountains and the balcony garden, where her imagination blossomed. She continues to find inspiration by photographing the natural art around her, including her "cohabitplants", trees, clouds, and water.
Cohort Member
Hekla Muotka
My life has been marked by a certain restlessness, and when I was young I didn't stay in one place. I have lived in Sweden, Denmark and Norway. I lived in Helsinki for twenty years, from where I moved to Muonio to my family's roots 16 years ago.
I am an environmental designer by profession, but unfortunately there is no job in Muonio for a profession like this. I don't feel comfortable in one job and I do many jobs in different fields. The only "work" that lasts is shamanic services. I have been making them for the past six years for travel entrepreneurs and individual travelers. I have been a shamanist for twenty years.
I'm an ITE - spellcaster. I do my own shaman shows and the spells used in them. I call myself a shamanistic witch, artist name Lapin Akka.
I am constantly educating myself in this field. I have studied witchcraft for more than two years and mediumship for a year. There are several courses related to shamanism in the background. Witchcraft and shamanism have a strong connection with nature and its four elements: earth, air, fire and water and Akasha, the great spirit. My connection to nature and this project is based on this.
My website: www.lumiloimu.fi
Cohort Member
Julija Pociūtė
Julija PociÅ«tÄ— s an interdisciplinary artist known for her mixed media installations based on interaction between video art, sculpture, design elements and photography. Her last year’s artistic research explores the diverse ways of experiencing and connecting with nature and the inner self, aiming to understand the layers of human and non-human reality and rethinking their interrelationships. She is currently a doctoral candidate at the University of Lapland in Finland, where she focuses on the impact of mindfulness and art-based practices on collaboration with trees and interconnection with the forest.
Solo and duo exhibitions: "Dust", Tartu Art House, Estonia (2022); "Quick Response", Gallery AV17, Vilnius (2021); "Limits of Growth", Gallery Meno Parkas, Düsseldorf (2021); "The Dazzled Eye Lost Its Speech", Gallery Meno Parkas, Kaunas (2020); "Line of Imprint", Gallery Cozinha, Porto (2018); Her works have been shown in group exhibitions: "BlackBox gallery", Munich, Germany; “ToruÅ„ Centre for Contemporary Art”, Poland; “SIM Residency”, Iceland; “OSTRALE Biennial O21”, Dresden; “EGC2021”, Bornholm Museum of Art, Denmark; Gallery LEVANT, Shanghai; “Kai Art Centre”, Tallinn; “Latvian National Museum”, Riga; "Glasmuseet Ebeltoft", Denmark.
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For more information, see www.julijapociute.com
Cohort Member
Marjo-Riikka Stenius
Marjo-Riikka Stenius is a visual artist and nature enthusiast based in Oulu. Her work has been exhibited in Helsinki, Oulu, Kemi and Haparanda (2024). She works for the Wild Zone NGO nature conservation organization as a field worker in Northern Finland. Most of the work is about creating new meadows; finding and harvesting native seeds from the wild, drying and processing them, sowing and growing seedlings. Wild Zone is a pioneering organization in Finland when it comes to research and action-based urban biodiversity, brownfield management, ecological restoration, participatory conservation, and experimental methods in fostering biodiversity, for example, through environmental art. As an artist she approaches field working and seed collecting as an ongoing art project she documents (working title "Seed Collector's Log"). Her aim is to create art in a way that acknowledges the inherent wisdom of the other, being it a seed, a forest or memory she uses as an inspiration for a painting. She believes that cultivating a sense of childlike wonder is essential for human survival. She has a background in humanities with a Master's degree in literature from University of Oulu. For more information, see www.marjoriikkastenius.com and https://villivyohyke.net/
Cohort Member
Mara Maslowska
Dagmara ‘Mara’ MasÅ‚owska (b.1992 in PoznaÅ„, Poland) is a dancer, somatic guide and mother. She has been following teachers internationally for the past ten years, learning about the intersection of life and art. She performed with a Norwegian street theater called Stella Polaris, joined the DUENDE School for Ensemble Physical Theatre in Greece, Carte Blanche sensorial theater in Denmark and JINEN Butoh School by sensei Takenouchi Atsushi in Italy. Moving to Finland in 2020 marked a new chapter of slow-paced work with focus on sustainability and community life. After graduating from ISLO’s program for Dance and Somatics (Joensuu) in 2022, she started a project called Luomu Koreo / Organic Choreographies. It is an interdisciplinary project that explores the rich intersection of dance, ecosomatics and deep ecology. In her current work she is drawn to improvisational and contemplative practices as well as walking, often exploring forests as a vast and immersive playground.
Cohort Member
Dr Mykyta Peregrym
Mykyta Peregrym is from Luhansk, Ukraine, but he left his native city in 2001 after his graduation from Luhansk Taras Shevchenko National Pedagogical University. Mykyta spent seventeen years working for M.M. Gryshko National Botanical Garden of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine and O.V. Fomin Botanical Garden of the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, Ukraine. He defended his PhD thesis "Rare and Endangered Species of the Flora of the Donetsk Upland" in 2006 and acted as a researcher in botany and as an herbarium keeper. In 2018, Mykyta moved to Eger, Hungary, where as a postdoc researcher at Eszterházy Károly University he studied the impact of artificial light at night on biodiversity and ecosystems. At the end of 2020, Mykyta returned to Ukraine and later started working as a Senior Lecturer in Ecology for his alma mater in Starobilsk after its evacuation from Luhansk in 2014 because of the first stage of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The outbreak of the Russian-Ukrainian War in February 2022 found Mykyta in Slovakia where he had a ten-month internship at Matej Bel University in Banska Bystrica. He then received a scholarship at the University of Oulu to continue his research and moved to Finland in December 2022. He presently has a two-year grant from the Academy of Finland to research citizen science in biodiversity conservation. For more information about his research, please visit: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Mykyta-Peregrym
Cohort Member
Dr Lydia Kokkola Reuhkala
Lydia Kokkola Reuhkala is a scholar who has been working at the University of Oulu, Finland since 2019. Prior to that, she worked at Luleå University of Technology, Sweden. She holds Docentships at the University of Turku and at her alma mater, Åbo Akademi University. As a scholar, Lydia has two main lines of research: Second language acquisition and Children’s literature. The connecting thread that runs throughout her research is an exploration of the power of narrative to promote deep learning. Within the Gifts from a Sentient Forest framework, Lydia intends to both work as a scholar studying how literature taps into the collective human understanding of plant intelligences and to work as novelist creating a novel in which humans engage with vegetal, animal and fungal intelligences.
Cohort Member
Mira Sunnari
Mira Sunnari is a singer-songwriter and choir director based in Tornio, northern Finland. She has been successful in several singing competitions during her career and she has published numerous albums and written musical plays. Mira Sunnari's refreshingly natural performance and nuanced interpretation have gained great popularity in Finland and she has also performed abroad such as in China, Greece and neighboring Sweden. Sunnari is also working with intuitive singing, where the moods of time and space are presented in a musical context. As a person who loves nature, Sunnari has been contacting trees and different elements of nature, creating music in collaboration with them.