OPEN CALL
Heading For The Woods
KORU8 invites artists to think about forests
Forests play a crucial role in climate change and the sixth mass extinction. Globally forests cover almost one-third of the land, and their cultural and social meaning varies between cultures and context. Forests are multispecies, and home to human and non-human animals. They are also meaningful places for relaxing, camping and foraging both in urban and rural environments.
What is a forest in the context of contemporary jewellery? Is it a material, colors or textures, feelings, words, experiences? How forests relate to you and your culture?
In Finland forest is an important part of national narratives and can act as a symbol of timelessness and immemorial, for instance. The theme of the KORU8 Exhibition is discussed with the KORU8 Exhibition venue, Lusto – The Finnish Forest Museum. As Lusto is a specialist in forest culture, it offers a cohesive surrounding for the forest-themed artwork and also a space for questions of forest use and protection.
The Open Call is closed
The exhibition is aimed at all professional artists or artist groups who are working as jewellery artists. We welcome also artists from other fields, who focus on creating new ideologies and aesthetic views in the sense of contemporary jewellery.
The main purpose of the KORU8 exhibition is to present international contemporary jewellery extensively. Together with the exhibition the event includes workshops and seminar, which bring together artists, lecturers, researchers and people with an interest in contemporary jewellery.
The KORU8 exhibition will open in May 2024 in Lusto - the Finnish Forest Museum, Punkaharju. From Lusto, the exhibition will continue to the Oulu Art Museum, Oulu in the beginning of 2025. As in previous years, the association aims to print an exhibition catalogue.
Jury
The jury aims to compose an exhibition that shows contemporary jewellery in its many facets, with fresh perspectives and attitudes in today’s world, to draw together a selection of art pieces with interesting relations to each other.
The jury for the KORU8 exhibition is composed of four members.
Kalkidan Hoex
”Adopted from Ethiopia and raised in the Netherlands, I always felt I lived in between two different worlds. I explore the intricacies of my identity and relate to others through my jewelry and other interdisciplinary art works. Between not being one nor the other, a third world started to exist.
The work I create is strongly linked to how I experience my mixed identity. The objects I make are an expression of how I perceive these worlds.
I want to show the realm where a blur of worlds exits. My experiences create a surrealistic place that conveys a feeling of culture that does not belong to one fixed place. Conveying through imagery how I adapted, conscious and unconscious to both cultures.
I use the in-between world to comprehend my reality and create the belief that I know where I belong. TheNEWtribe is about how I ground myself. It serves as my safe space and coping mechanism for the mental fractures endured. Where I find my sense of identity. This world is deeply rooted representational, educational and within empowerment of the position I take.
Real people
Real stories
Founder of TheNEWtribe”
Reetta Karhunkorva
She works as Senior Forest Culture Specialist at The Finnish Forest Museum Lusto, a national museum focusing on forest culture. She has an MA and she is preparing her PhD thesis on private forest owners’ relationships with the forests at the University of Eastern Finland. Karhunkorva has long experience as a museum professional, and has worked on museum collections, exhibitions, expert work, living heritage and museum concept development.
Photo: Sari Kotivirta, Lusto
Terhi Tolvanen
She makes sculptural jewelry where she continuously reinvents nature. Her imaginary wearable trees and plants connect natural and man-made, questioning at the same time the role of control and freedom in this dialogue.
After graduating as silversmith in 1993 from the Design Institute in Lahti, FI she continued her education at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam, NL. In 1997 she was invited to study at the Sandberg Institute, Amsterdam, NL for her Master of Arts degree, which she obtained in 1999. Right after her graduation Terhi started exhibiting her work in many solo and group exhibitions internationally.
Her jewelry is in many important collections around the world such as the Schmuck Museum in Pforzheim, DE, Victoria & Albert Museum in London, UK, Coda Museum in Apeldoorn, NL. The latest acquisitions are made by the Musée Les Arts Decoratifs in Paris, FR and MAD New York, gift Porter Price Collection, USA.
Since 2017 Terhi is also teaching in ENSAD, the École National Supérieur d’Art et Design in Limoges in France.
Selina Väliheikki
(she/her)
She works as a curator of exhibitions at the Oulu Museum of Art. She is interested in small things, and motivated by collective practices and feminist pedagogy. Before Oulu Museum of Art, she was part of collectives initiating Feminist Culture House and Museum of Impossible Forms in Helsinki.
Photo: Mika Friman, Oulun taidemuseo