KUBU 2025 SUMMER EXHIBITION & PROGRAM

The Garden and the Hedge

5.6.–31.8.2025

The Garden and The Hedge marks Kulturhus Björkboda (Kubu), inaugural curated programme with an international curator. Spanning 12 weeks, from the opening weekend on Thursday, June 5th, to the closing on August 31st, the programme is led by artist and researcher Teresa Dillon.

Focusing on the garden and the hedge as interfaces and borderlines that shape our understanding of nature and our relationship to it, Kubu’s setting—a former school building nestled in the rural heart of the Kimitoön municipality on an island in the Archipelago Sea, Southwest Finland—provides a unique and rich context for exploring these themes. The Garden and The Hedge is a part of New Rural Schools plan on co-designing Kubu grounds during the coming years. The year 2025 is conceptually encapsulated by the elemental theme of soil followed by water, metal, fire and wind in the following years. The annual theme encompasses the life-long learning curriculum and its topics in the workshop programme.

Conceptually, gardens and hedges are deeply rooted in the notion of enclosures and separation, symbolising idealised visions of paradise—sanctuaries that connect to the divine or serve as complex expressions of control over nature. While these spaces often reflect power, wealth, and colonial connotations, for many cultures, nature’s rich diversity was never something to be enclosed or controlled. Instead, their relationship with the land was characterised by a more symbiotic and adaptive approach, where interaction with nature was seen as a continuous, call-and-response dialogue.

Today, these ideals are increasingly reflected in efforts to repair and restore landscapes. From rewilding and permaculture to creating more diverse and species-friendly gardens and improving soil vitality. Yet, while some contemporary practices now emphasise collaboration with nature rather than domination, with the hope of fostering a more caring and responsible relationship to the earth, others continue to focus on exploitation and separation.

Building on the complexities and rich histories associated with the garden and hedge, our 2025 Summer Programme will delve deeper into Finnish traditions, where the border lines and rights to nature, already set a stage for re-imagining human-landscape relations. While the Finnish words for “garden,” puutarha, meaning “tree enclosure” or “tree yard,” and “hedge,” or aita, denoting fencing or partitioning, hold similar meaning to other cultures. These notions are further enmeshed at Kubu, which sits on a standard Finnish school plot—100×100 metres. Rather than seeing this plot as a confined space, with its existing loose and porous neighbourly edges, we reverse the conventional formats of the enclosed garden, the hedge borderline and the school as a formal space for education, by positioning each as an open protocol for learning. With the view that the Kubu site becomes a dynamic environment where ongoing biological fictions and frictions, particularly those involving human, technological, and environmental relationships, can be actively explored.

This approach not only shapes the direction of Kubu’s 2025 Summer Programme but also marks the beginning of a long-term vision. Moving beyond the typical cycle of cultural programming, we aim to chart a course for the site’s future that spans the coming decade, creating a sustained engagement with what it means to express and reflect on our complex, evolving and deeply interdependent relation to the natural world.
As Dillon notes, “Reconsidering our position within the living world—especially in an era when our tools and devices demand so much from the earth and are deeply intertwined with global conditions—requires both a long-term perspective and a continual rehearsal of values and points of view. Kubu’s 2025 Summer Programme adopts the garden and hedge as metaphors and spatial frameworks that invite us to come together and collaboratively explore these complex issues. By rooting this work in a tangible way, Kubu offers a physical space—a former schoolhouse and its surrounding land—as a platform for learning and engagement. This space allows us to delve into the intricate entanglements of our relationship with nature. By staying with the challenges and frictions inherent in this relationship, the goal is to gradually soften the boundaries, creating feedback loops with each other and with the natural world. These loops can be activated physically within the building and its surrounding plot. For this reason, the 2025 Summer Programme is also envisioned as the beginning of a 10-year journey, exploring what it means to work within such an extended timeline”.

Over the coming months we will continue our work with our partners and local communities, inviting new and existing guests to share in this endeavour. With the Summer Programme including a gallery exhibition and series of public workshops, conversations, screenings and events that will bring together local, national and international participants and practitioners.

For more information about the upcoming Kubu 2025 Summer Programme, please contact:

Tuomo Tammenpää
tuomo@kubu.fi
+358 40 5254636
Kulturhus Björkboda
Producer

Team KUBU 2025+

Teresa Dillon
Curator, international program
Polarproduce

Ritva Kovalainen
Co-curator, environmental art
Norpas Festival

Tuomo Tammenpää
Producer, Exhibition design
Kulturhus Björkboda

Sari Kippilä
Producer, Workshop program
Kulturhus Björkboda

Nestori Brück
Event identity
CO- Helsinki Oy

Juergen Neuman
Advisor, community program
School of Collaboration

Co-operative Vinde
Production Company

Support