In 2026, the Photo North galleries found in Cultural Centre Valve will offer three exhibitions per gallery. In addition, Photo North is participating in the Oulu Capital of Culture project and is organizing an international group exhibition for the Oulu Art Museum, Adaptation – Time is not on our side, towards possible futures, filling the second floor of the museum.
The first exhibitions of the year are a sort of counterpart to nature and its exploration. In the main gallery, artist collective nabbteeri’s mutant and nondurable (2020-) is related to the artist collective’s work with invertebrates and awakens the viewer to sense the immediate environment, the life teeming around it, and its disappearance from the perspective of other species of organisms.
In the Foyer Gallery, Ville Rinne reflects on his exhibition Nature of Science on how humans strive to understand nature: “While newspapers report on the melting of polar ice caps and record-breaking wildfires, a researcher studying the distribution of a daphnia species stares into a fist-sized puddle in Tvärminne. He has done this every summer for decades. Two hundred kilometers to the north, a researcher from the Finnish Meteorological Institute measures the carbon dioxide bound by biomass in Hyytiälä. A third researcher examines the retreat of the Arctic treeline in Utsjoki.”
Opening in May, the summer exhibition Pelekääkkö nää polliisia? is curated by Katie Lenanton and Farbod Fakharzadeh in dialogue with artists Phan Nguyen, Vinayak and Yujie Zhou. Through investigating Valve’s history as a former site of incarceration which has been replaced by an exhibition space, the group researches how policing—and resistance or compliance towards it—has long been enshrined in Oulu’s public and cultural spaces. The exhibition presents a suite of collectively-made expanded photography artworks that delve into the power dynamics of distant and recent local histories and stories, using archival sources, testimonies, speculation, and humour. In July, Valve Cultural Centre will be exceptionally open for Oulu’s Capital of Culture year, and this exhibition continues until 30th of August.
In the Foyer Gallery, Panu Johansson reflects on the changes in the northern landscape. The exhibition is realized using mosaic-like Polaroid-based photographs, in which Johansson is fascinated by their processuality, uniqueness, lo-fi aesthetics and historical uses.
The last exhibitions of the year in the galleries focus on intimacy, home and the co-existence of humans and animals. Hertta Kiiski’s exhibition Bloomrotmilk considers growing together and relationships with other species through love and care. Kiiski’s works are spatially sensitive installations in which photography, moving images, space and presence are intertwined. She pays special attention to the encounter between the works and the viewer and to thinking about the body relationship of the installation. In Kiiski’s exhibition, intuition, intimacy, playfulness, humour and mysticism come to the fore – she builds worlds where the dazzling and dizzying nature of existence intersects with processes on a planetary scale.
In the Foyer Gallery, Lyy Raitala explores the coexistence of humans and animals in the built environment through staged photography in her exhibition Nesting. The work examines the interspecies rituals of nesting and settling – their differences, similarities and layers. Nesting appears as a survival strategy but also as an intimate gesture that unites humans and animals – as a need to protect themselves, to find a rhythm and a place to be. The work moves between control and surrender, care and instinct, structure and chance, pondering who really builds and for whom.
In addition to the exhibitions in Photo North’s Galleries, Adaptation – Time Is Not On Our Side, Towards Possible Futures -exhibition opens in October on the second floor of the Oulu Art Museum. Adaptation focuses on major global changes and their local impact. The project ponders how ecological, social, cultural and technological changes are occurring in the Arctic Circle and Europe – and what new perspectives and strategies we need to adopt as we adapt to inevitable change. Who or what should adapt: humans or nature? Who eventually lays out the rules?
The artists of the exhibition are Matti Aikio, Erich Berger, Michele Boulogne, Elina Bry, Jaakko Myyri, Arttu Nieminen and Maija Tammi. The curator team behind the exhibition are head curator Antti Tenetz and curators Taija Jyrkäs and Darja Zaitsev from Photo North. As part of the exhibition process, Boulogne, Bry and Myyri will spend residency periods in Northern Finland. Boulogne and Myyri at research stations, where the artists will be able to utilize research data in their future works created for the exhibition. Bry has worked in Ii among the locals. Read more about the Adaptation project here.
Antti Tenetz’s immersive work, VOID – Wild Aesthetics, will also be released in conjunction with Adaptation. The work combines local human and environmental knowledge with global satellite and research data. Using geospatial information and augmented reality (XR), the installation progresses through place-specific narratives. The work adapts to multiple formats – deep space installations, projections and light works. The themes intersect art, science, ecology and technology, reaching from the limits of the Kármán Line to viable habitats, through the Earth’s thin biosphere to the Arctic regions and the geological depths of Europe.
Adaptation is part of the Official Oulu2026 Programme as Oulu is the European Capital of Culture in the year 2026.
Picture taken from nabbteeri’s exhibition mutant and nondurable.
16.1.-26.4.2026
Photo North, Gallery: nabbteeri: mutant and nondurable
16.1.-3.5.2026
Photo North, Foyer Gallery: Ville Rinne: Nature of Science
9.5.-30.8.2026
Photo North, Gallery: Pelekääkkö nää polliisia?
Exhibition curated by Katie Lenanton and Farbod Fakharzadeh, artists Phan Nguyen, Vinayak & Yujie Zhou
Photo North, Foyer Gallery: Panu Johansson
5.9.-22.12.2026
Photo North, Gallery: Hertta Kiiski: Bloomrotmilk
Photo North, Foyer Gallery: Lyy Raitala: Nesting
16.10.2026-14.2.2027
Oulu Art Museum: Adaptation – Time is not on our side, towards possible futures
