Exhibition activities celebrate research outcomes directly within local communities, fostering engagement and dialogue. In addition to these pop-up exhibitions, large-scale touring exhibitions extend AAE’s visibility beyond local contexts and universities, reaching broader audiences and creating lasting impact.
The Observation of Change Exhibition
The exhibition Observation of Change reflects and communicates ecological restoration that helps nature to become more natural: decolonize birch forests from planted spruce trees. Artists have engaged in residencies in Nordland’s Junkerdal Nature Reserve, and worked with park managers to explore ecological restoration, raising questions about environmental ethics and the human role. The project included art workshops for school pupils, further enhancing its educational aspect.
AAE Exhibition Celebrates Arctic Communities and Collaboration
The Art Education exhibition celebrates Arctic communities, collaboration, and the deep connections between people, nature, and culture. The posters document and present art education initiatives and artistic activities that envision more sustainable futures and empower local communities. The exhibition showcases efforts that foster decolonisation, revitalisation, and resilience in the Arctic.
The exhibition highlights the value of the arts and art education for the vitality of Arctic communities.
The exhibition consists of 18 roll-up posters, printed project catalogues, and videos accessible via QR codes. The touring exhibition will also be presented at other events and venues.
The exhibition is produced by the project “Community Art-Based Sustainability in the Arctic”, funded by the University of the Arctic. The project is a collaboration between Arctic universities — the University of Lapland (Finland), Nord University (Norway), Umeå University (Sweden) — and the Association Siunissaq (Greenland). However, the exhibition also features art education activities involving many more partners, local communities, and students
Exhibition Catalogues
These exhibitions explore how New Genre Arctic Art and Art Education address themes such as local ecocultures, natural resource extraction, politics, identities, and cultural continuity, while fostering cultural resilience and sustainability. The artworks and documentation of art education practices from various parts of the circumpolar world highlight the participatory engagement and agency of artists and art educators. Through these projects and processes, the exhibitions demonstrate how New Genre Arctic Art and Art Education contribute to a sense of inclusion, cultural revitalization, decolonization, strong identity, and cultural pride. This approach to art education reflects an optimistic perspective on the potential of art and education to inspire change towards more sustainable societies in the North and the Arctic.
Relate North 2024: New Genre Arctic Art Education
The Relate North 2024: New Genre Arctic Art Education exhibition is shown as part of the Relate North #12 Symposium, with many of the artists who are presenting in the gallery spaces also taking on additional roles as presenters, workshop leaders, and panellists in the symposium programme. The artworks are enriched by the spirit of plurality, diversity, and dialogues within communities.
Huhmarniemi, M. & Cahoon, N. (Eds.) (2024). Relate North 2024 : new genre arctic art education : exhibition catalogue. University of Lapland. https://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-952-337-453-9
New genre Arctic art and art education exhibition
The exhibition is a production of New Genre Arctic Art Education initiative consisting of multiple art-based projects, in which two Thematic Networks of UArctic, Arctic Sustainable Art and Design and Children of the Arctic, combine participatory practices of arts and psychosocial work to develop sustainable art and education. This initiative places the inhabitants of the North and the Arctic, especially the youth, in the center as they will be the creators of the Arctic future.
Jokela, T. (Eds.) (2024). New Genre Arctic Art and Art Education Exhibition. University of Lapland. https://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-952-337-432-4
Arctic Art Education exhibition in Narsaq, Greenland
An exhibition presented documents of Arctic art education as well as participatory installations. Representatives from the Narsaq community—including local museum staff, cultural coordinators, teachers, youth workers, care home employees, pupils, and young people—were actively engaged in this interdisciplinary collaboration. The resulting artworks, created both collaboratively and individually, were presented in a pop-up exhibition that attracted around 100 visitors interested in the initiative. The exhibition was shown in spring 2025.
Nomadic Hub
Exhibition in Karasjok, 2024
The artworks created by facilitators and children, along with videos documenting the processes at the Karasjok Nomadic Hub of AAE, were assembled into a pop-up exhibition, inviting school pupils’ parents, grandparents and other community members to explore them at the Sámi Centre for Contemporary Art (Sámi Dáiddaguovddáš). Some elements, such as carved reindeer antlers, were later moved into a public art installation in front of the Sámi Parliament building in Inari, showcasing local activities to a larger audience.
Exhibition in Nuuk, 2024
During the first AAE initiative meeting at the University of Greenland in Nuuk, a pop-up exhibition integrated into the congress connected our artistic research to the broader theme of Arctic urbanisation. The local partner, Siunissaq Association, co-curated community- and sustainability-focused portraits with Inuit youth. The exhibition fostered collective reflection and dialogue, laying the foundation for developing the Nomadic Hub model within AAE.
New Genre Arctic Art and Art Education Exhibition
Arctic Congress Bodø, Norway, 29 May – 3 June 2024
The exhibition is a production of New Genre Arctic Art Education initiative consisting of multiple art-based projects, in which two Thematic Networks of UArctic, Arctic Sustainable Art and Design and Children of the Arctic, combine participatory practices of arts and psychosocial work to develop sustainable art and education. This initiative places the inhabitants of the North and the Arctic, especially the youth, in the center as they will be the creators of the Arctic future.
Photo: Peter Berliner, 2024.
