KUBU 2025 SUMMER

The Garden and The Hedge

International summer exhibition and program

The Garden and The Hedge is Kulturhus Björkboda’s (KUBU) inaugural international summer exhibition and programme, developed in partnership with the 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.

Conceptually, gardens and hedges are deeply rooted in ways of shaping and navigating earth and soil. Gardens have long symbolised 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. While the hedge, the (pensas)aita, in Finnish and the häck in Swedish denote ideas of fencing or partitioning. For many who work and live off the land, our relationship with the soil is much symbiotic and adaptive, where interaction with nature was seen as a continuous, call-and-response dialogue.

In 2024 the Save Soil movement warned that 95% of the Earth’s soil may be degraded by 2050. From rewilding, permaculture to carbon sequestering and improving soil vitality through our understanding of microorganisms. Contemporary soil 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.

With 35 artistic works, performances, and workshops, the exhibition explores soil health, care, and community. It invites reflection on visible and invisible boundaries, resilience, and how we listen and respond to the land beneath us. With the exhibition, through installations, performances, workshops, and our learning programming, emphasising the importance of soil care, its environmental significance, and the ways in which it connects to our larger ecological, sociocultural and political landscapes and soil stewardship.

With Kimitoön celebrating 700 years since its first recorded mention in 1325. The island’s location in the UNESCO’s Archipelago Sea Biosphere Reserve, and its rich histories of soil work, through iron mines, farming and fishing. KUBU is the perfect location for this inaugural international curated programme. 

Exhibiting Artists:

Exhibiting works from the Finnish and Iranian art duo Kalle Hamm and Dzamil Kamanger, their projects Garden of the Undocumented (2013) delve into the connections between migration and plant life, reflecting on how gardens and hedgerows have shaped the lives of refugees and immigrants in Europe. With the works Removing Defenses (2014) and Band of Weeds (2017, 2019) exploring plants modes of perceptions and sensing. Scottish artist Constanza Dessain turns the sap of docks, sticky willies, and ragwort into prints, work In the Skin of a Meadow (2024), captures in print her tending of wildflower meadows in her home in the south of

Scotland. 

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Clambering outside over the Kubu roof, the Finnish-UK duo Andy Best and Merja Puustinen inflatable sculpture, Flowers of Evil/Fleurs Du Mal (2022), considers the evolution of plant morphology in response to soil contamination. Digging, organising, and rearranging soil, Finnish artist Antti Laitinen, Forest Square I, II, III (2013) emerges from the act of physically removing a section of forest, extracting its various elements—soil, moss, wood, and pines. 

French-Welsh artist, Paul Granjon’s kinetic sculpture Mud Machine (2013-ongoing), takes local soil and electronic waste as the bases for creating an evolving machine that will live in the main gallery and can be augmented over the opening weekend, through hands-on workshops. Alongside Mud Machine, Granjon’s collaboration Garden Lab Whispers (2023) with the media art centre, Knowle West Media Centre (KWMC) and the designer and accessibility advocate Ruth Hennell will be on display. For several years the British artist Magz Hall has been using radio as the medium for her artistic practice. In Radio Air Garden (2023-ongoing) she taps into traditions of electroculture, which involve capturing and directing atmospheric electricity into the soil to enhance plant growth, based on the idea that plants, like cells, have electrical signals. 

Finnish artist Teemu Lehmusruusu senses changing fluctuations in soil moisture and temperature through his sonic, sensor-based sculptural work, Pulse (2022). Blending art, technology, and environmental science, UK-Polish artist Kasia Molga and Robin Rimbaud (aka Scanner) present speculative narratives through their piece By the Code of Soil (2019)—a video work that draws on a European soil-sensing network and satellite data. South African researchers, cultural producers and sonic selectors, Nombuso Mathibela and Sibonelo Gumede share their research into how soil and land degradation shaped the sonic expression of the Zulu Princess Constance Magogo Sibilile Mantithi Ngangezinye ka Dinizulu, including that relating to her acoustic, bow instrument making and the sound traditions in South Africa.

Finnish musician and composer Timo Kaukolampi draws inspiration from fungi and soil microorganisms found in the region to create a new sonic mixtape for the island that will be specially designed for a specific walking route. Kaukolampi will also use the sounds to create  live performance at the opening weekend. 

Summer Residents & Book Store Collaboration

We have four residents on site across the summer programme including roving science educator and researcher Marc R. Dusseiller, Taiwanese artist and design researcher Shih Wei-Chieh and Finnish-UK cultural producer Andrew Gryf Paterson and !Mediengruppe Bitnik (Carmen Weisskopf and Domagoj Smoljo). Dusseiller, Wei-Chieh and Gryf Paterson will contribute workshops to our opening and closing weekends. 

In July !Mediengruppe Bitnik will extend the Island School of Social Autonomy (ISSA) – a digital resource library that will be housed at Kubu and connect to their work on the Croatian island of Vis. This library will become a permanent resource documenting the work of Kubu and provide  ‘how-to’ pamphlets relating to our workshop and on-site builds. In collaboration with Zabriske, the Berlin-based, independent book store, who specialises in nature-culture topics, we have selected a dozen books on the topic of soil, gardening and nature based topics.


Opening weekend highlights:

Artists Paul Granjon, hands-on kinesthetic mud sculpture workshop using local soil and electronic waste and Constanza Dessain plant-based, cyanotype printing workshops. Family friendly and suitable for all ages. British author Jon Drori, will share insights from his books Around the World in 80 Plants and Around the World in 80 Trees. Roving science educator and researcher Marc R. Dusseiller will run a live soil sampling and listening station across the opening weekend, with Taiwanese artist and design researcher Shih Wei-Chieh will share their work on dye-sensitized solar cells for making new art works.

Summer highlights

Ongoing
Build greenhouse from recycled materials with carpenter Jussi Puustjärvi

19 June
Tap into plant reproduction systems with artist and acupuncturist Aino El Sol
Make your saunavihta by local specialist

6 July
Create a traditional willow hedge with artist and gardener Sara Ilveskorpi

12 and 13 July
Develop your own plant inks with Ronja Tammenpää and Marjut Nordberg

27 July
Join Andrew Gryf Paterson for his work on kitchen composting with worms, through a playful VJ session.

31.8. elokuuta
Ferment your own beer and food with researchers from University of Helsinki, CSSM

Exhibitions, opening hours and admissions
Two exhibitions: The Garden And the Hedge and the Piha, Pyhä, Metsä, Maa environmental art exhibition.
More detailed information about both exhibitions and the program can be found on the website kubu.fi
The exhibitions are open 5.6.–31.8.2025, Tue-Sun 11-17 (Sat: 11-15) Mon closed / by appointment info@kubu.fi
The entrance fee to the exhibitions is 10€ (7€ students/seniors, children free).
The ticket entitles you to both exhibitions throughout the summer.
The first floor of Kubu, where almost all the works are located, is accessible.
Some of the environmental art works are in an easily accessible forest.

Kubu Cafe & Shop Programme:
Throughout the summer programme the Kubu Cafe and Shop will be open for drinks, food and refreshments during the opening hours, follow social media and kubu.fi for details. With books selected in collaboration with Zabriske, the Berlin-based, independent book store, who specialises in nature-culture topics on sale.

About Kubu:
Kubu is an artist-run, independent space dedicated to transdisciplinary artistic practice, environmental sustainability, and community engagement. Located on the island of Kimitoön, Finland, Kubu operates as a living, evolving project aimed at addressing pressing ecological and social issues through the lens of art and design, social science and humanities, science, and education.

Support
The exhibition has been supported by Kimitoön 700-year anniversary fund (Föreningen Konstsamfundet & Kimitoön municipality), Svenska Kulturfonden, Pro Helvetia, The Arts Council of Wales and Engelsby Verk Ab. 

Team:
Teresa Dillon Curator The Garden and The Hedge and Artist Direction, Elemental Programme.
Tuomo Tammenpää, Kulturhus Björkboda, Executive Producer.
Sari Kippilä, Kulturhus Björkboda. Producer.

More info
Tuomo Tammenpää
+358 40 5253636
tuomo@kubu.fi

KUBU 2025 SUMMER

Piha, Pyhä, Metsä, Maa

(The Yard, the Sacred, the Forest, the Land)
Environmental art exhibition and program

The Finnish word metsä, forest, has long meant ‘border, edge or verge’ – the area outside the boundaries of home, an area that does not belong to man. The word pyhä, sacred, on the other hand, has been used to define a special place in nature, a time, or a being. Both sacred and forest have been associated with respect and an acceptance, that there are areas, which can never be fully experienced, controlled or understood by humans. The significance of the words defined boundaries, which needed permission to be crossed, urging caution and thus preventing people from acting unreasonably. Nature’s gifts could not just be taken, they had to be asked for.

In the nature-worshipping Finnish folk tradition, certain trees have been considered sacred. According to mythical thinking, the world is ruled by invisible forces, and it has been necessary to secure their favour for all activities. In this interaction, it has been necessary to give to receive something. The primary function of both art and ritual has been to create a link between the invisible sacred and the material world.

The excess as normal has led to a crisis for humanity. Boundaries have been broken. The global average temperature has risen by 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels, the carrying capacity of the biosphere is under threat, the limits of sustainable harvesting of our forests have been exceeded, and our forests have been transformed from carbon sinks to carbon emitters. We have tended to rely on ourselves alone, on technology and economic growth, rather than on the land and functioning ecosystems.

Today’s scientific worldview could bring us back to the forest and the sacred. Instead of removing the miraculous of life’s diversity, science has created an increasingly precise and at the same time miraculous picture of an infinitely complex web of life. And in the face of this, the receptive human being cannot but fall silent in awe.

Through artworks placed in trees and forests, KUBU’s summer exhibition explores the boundaries that separate the dead from the living, the present from the past, the invisible forces that govern life from the visible reality of everyday life, and culture from nature. At the border, it is possible to find a context, to remember and to relate. Each work in the exhibition is a meeting place that maintains a memory of trees and forests as something more than what can be immediately sensed. This imperceptible may be animistic in its nature or established by scientific research.

Participating artists: Eija Isojärvi, Anni Rapinoja and Anna Vasko. Community artworks produced by local participants in May 24th and 29th workshops. The exhibition is part of the 700-year anniversary of Kimitoön.

Exhibitions, opening hours and admissions

Two exhibitions: The Garden And the Hedge and the Piha, Pyhä, Metsä, Maa environmental art exhibition.
More detailed information about both exhibitions and the program can be found on the website kubu.fi
The exhibitions are open 5.6.–31.8.2025, Tue-Sun 11-17 (Sat: 11-15) Mon closed / by appointment info@kubu.fi
The entrance fee to the exhibitions is 10€ (7€ students/seniors, children free).
The ticket entitles you to both exhibitions throughout the summer.
The first floor of Kubu, where almost all the works are located, is accessible.
Some of the environmental art works are in an easily accessible forest.

About Kubu:

Kubu is an artist-run, independent space dedicated to transdisciplinary artistic practice, environmental sustainability, and community engagement. Located on the island of Kimitoön, Finland, Kubu operates as a living, evolving project aimed at addressing pressing ecological and social issues through the lens of art and design, social science and humanities, science, and education.

Support

The exhibition has been supported by Kimitoön 700-year anniversary fund (Föreningen Konstsamfundet & Kimitoön municipality), Svenska Kulturfonden and is co-produced with Norpas festival

Team:

Ritva Kovalainen, curator, Piha, Pyhä, Metsä, Maa -exhibition
Eija Isojärvi & Ritva Kovalainen, design & direction of community artworks
Design & direction of Community artworks Ritva Kovalainen and Eija Isojärvi
Tuomo Tammenpää, executive producer, Kulturhus Björkboda
Sari Kippilä, producer, Kulturhus Björkboda

More info
Sari Kippilä
+358 41 806 4766
sari@kubu.fi