Finnish Institute in the UK and Ireland is supporting five UK-based curators Kollektiv Collective (Pia Zeitzen and Sasha Shevchenko), Deborah Smith, Cliff Lauson and Aliyah Hasinah to visit Helsinki Biennial 2025 preview from the 5-7 June. As part of our ongoing professional visitor programme, the Institute supports visits by cultural and arts professionals from the UK and Ireland to Finland and vice versa to strengthen international networks and launch new collaborative projects. These curator visits are organised in collaboration with Frame Contemporary Art Finland and Helsinki Biennial.
About the curators
Kollektiv Collective is a London-based curatorial collective founded by independent curators and writers Pia Zeitzen and Sasha Shevchenko in 2019. Kollektiv Collective specialises in site-specific curatorial projects with a research- and process-led collaborative practice. Zeitzen and Shevchenko’s work is rooted in their fascination with space – architecturally, conceptually and socio-politically – through which they engage with contemporary anxieties in order to critically and communally contextualise different modes of being in the present. Working site-specifically, the underpinnings of their projects are developed with and against a given exhibition space and setting.
Deborah Smith is a curator and consultant whose practice explores strategies for collaboration and the presentation of interdisciplinary work. She was formerly Director of the Arts Council Collection, the UK’s most widely circulated national collection of modern and contemporary British art, and has held key roles as Interim Head of Programmes at the Serpentine Galleries and Associate Curator at Arup, the global engineering and design firm. She co-founded the curatorial partnership Smith + Fowle.
Dr Cliff Lauson is currently Director of Exhibitions at Somerset House, London overseeing the exhibitions and commissions programme. He has personally curated commissions by international artists such as Hylozoic/Desires, Jitish Kallat, Zheng Bo, Amba Sayal-Bennet and Theresa Weber. He is currently curating a major exhibition with internationally renowned choreographer, Sir Wayne McGregor, forthcoming October 2025.
Aliyah Hasinah is a filmmaker, curator, writer, and founder of Black Curatorial – A curatorial agency prioritising radical Black thought alongside Black Artists, Curators and Audiences. Black Curatorial’s focus is exhibition making, consultancy, cultural programming, residencies and research funding centering Black global stewardship and culture making. Aliyah’s interdisciplinary practice centres decoloniality, cultural equity, and healing through play. Grounded in Black feminist and anti-colonial thought, Aliyah’s research focuses on global curatorial strategies, anti-colonial dreaming, Caribbean photographic histories and indigenous medicinal practice.
Please visit Frame Contemporary Art Finland’s website for more information about the visitor programme, and Helsinki Biennial website for information about the biennial.
