Curatorial Projects
An overview of curatorial initiatives by Jussi Koitela, spanning public processes, exhibitions, events and series on economy, borders and monumentality.
Featured projects
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Floating Ghost
Presented at the Manifesta 10 On Board & What Is Monumental Today? Symposium, addressing geopolitical situations between Russia and the Western world.
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Dissolving Frontiers
An exhibition at Gallery Augusta/HIAP, documented with installation views. Photo credit: Hertta Kiiski.
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Skills of Economy Event
A project gathering contemporary artistic and activistic reactions to economy. The seminar was held at Ravitolalaiva Wäiski on 3.10.2013, with screenings at Finnish Academy from 2.10.–6.10.2013.
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Artist-Build-Time
Featuring an animation screening and lecture by Jukka Silokunnas, "Structural Change, 2012", at Oulu Art Museum in 2012, with artists Jussi Matilainen, Karoliina Paappa, Laura Rytkönen, Heidi Sarämäki and Jukka Silokunnas.
Initiatives
- Not Another Public Process
- Work It Out Act 2
- Work It Out
- New Arrangements
- Skills of Economy — Post Models: Ore.e Refineries To Use As a Capital For Your Health Only!
- Featherweight Portable Museum
- MediaPyhät
- Circle – New Paintings from Tampere
- Ars Kärsämäki "Experimental Life"
Related sections
Artistic works and projects are documented in the Works/Projects archive, and written and critical texts in the Texts section.
Jussi Koitela works as a visual artist and curator whose practice examines the systems that quietly govern daily life. His projects circle around economy, labour, institutions and the emotional weight of work, translating these abstract structures into visible arrangements of images, texts and events. Rather than illustrating a theory, he stages conditions in which those conditions can be felt by a broader public, allowing painting, writing and public processes to meet on equal terms.
The curatorial projects collected here span public processes, exhibitions, events and long-running series. Recurring threads include the shifting meaning of borders, the slow monumentality of infrastructure, and the way capital reorganises attention, health and time. Each initiative is treated as an ongoing arrangement rather than a finished object, dissolving and reforming as collaborators, institutions and audiences enter and leave the working space around it.
Floating Ghost was presented in the context of Manifesta 10, extending an interest in the residue of memory and the portability of cultural memory. On Board, together with a symposium on what is monumental today, addressed geopolitical situations between Russia and the Western world. Dissolving Frontiers, an exhibition realised with Gallery Augusta and HIAP and documented through installation views, examined how contested lines continue to organise belonging and exclusion.
Skills of Economy brought together contemporary artistic and activistic responses to economic conditions, treating economic life as a field of shared skills rather than abstract numbers. The accompanying writings move from institutional melancholy toward ethical demands, and from the money and roles of the artist-worker toward the ordinary feelings that gather around a work and its surroundings. These texts situate curatorial practice inside working life rather than apart from it.
Alongside these efforts, the practice includes paintings, portable museum projects, and site-specific works in places such as Tampere, Kärsämäki and Tallinn, some developed in the context of ArsExperimental and other institutional settings. Writing, speaking and teaching are integral parts of the method: the spoken and written word, including streams of noise and unfinished phrases, is used to test how institutions hear, absorb and answer criticism in public.