This year’s CIB international focus is Finland!
We’ve invited Finnish artists to showcase the broad spectrum of the Finnish comics landscape – with different events as part of the Satellite Week and at the main festival.
Events
KutiKuti X Femicomix Finland
A Finnish collective comic invasion of neurotitan Gallery
Artists and Curators
KUTIKUTI COLLECTIVE
KutiKuti Collective is a non-profit contemporary comics association and artist collective formed in Finland in 2005. The core of KutiKuti consists of about fifty members who make, teach, and publish comics. Kutikuti has over a hundred supportive members around the world and has quickly become one of the most recognized marvels of the Finnish comics scene abroad. They operate internationally with an aim to maintain and develop comics as an art form.
The Kutikuti group exhibition
at neurotitan celebrates the DIY mentality, which from our perspective is the root of contemporary comics. The selected artists are a representation of the current field of modern comics in Finland, curated
by Emmi Valve and Jyrki Nissinen
via an internal open call for Kutikuti members.
Shambhavi Singh
Shambhavi Singh is a visual artist and researcher based in Helsinki.
Singh makes comics, prints, animations, zines and paintings that engage with the context of social inequality. This work explores the notions of disconnect between people and their habitat and is narrative focused, with the stories often bordering playfully on the routine and absurd.
Jyrki Nissinen
Jyrki Nissinen is a Vieremä based artist and cartoonist. His work takes influence from tragicomedy, dark humour, DIY spirit and pop-culture.
Johanna “roju” Rojola
roju or more officially Johanna Rojola (they / them) is doing curatorial work in the field of comics, with a special interest in collective work. Founding member of Femicomix Finland, Kutikuti collective and the feminist, antiracist workspace Poimu. Loves kayaking and travelling by train.
Emmi Valve
Emmi Valve is a Porvoo-based
comic artist whose work consists of autobiographical graphic novels, zines and exhibitions. She often works with human themes such as mental health and sexuality.
At the moment Valve is finishing a graphic novel on heteronormativity and working on another book on school violence.
She’s a co-owner of an old houseboat turned into a cultural space for live music and artist residencies called Porvoon Kulttuurilaiva.
FEMICOMIX FINLAND
Feministinen sarjakuvatoiminta (Feministische Comics Aktion) or Femicomix Finland is a loose peer support network founded in 2013. Its inspiration came from Swedish Dotterbolaget comics collective.
During its 10+ years the collective has made zines, organized exhibitions and residencies, given out shame & fame prizes and sold thousands of zines through Femidistro at dozens of different events.
Femicomix Finland exhibits under the theme Incomplete Together at neurotitan. The exhibition is created as a collective and asks questions about individuality, originality, professionalism, process versus result, gate keeping and canons.
The curatorial working group for this exhibition consists of Nina Mutik, Susi Nousiainen, Johanna Rojola and Shambhavi Singh.
Nina Mutik
Nina Mutik has published comics online since 2010 and is focused on queer and poly activism through short form and comedy.
They are a funny, queer, poly nonbinary person and despite the rumours not actually a bunny. A book collecting Nina’s webcomics will be published this year.
Susi Nousiainen
Susi Nousiainen is an artist and researcher, working with various materials from poetry to performance. He is interested in how art helps embody the things that are difficult to discuss otherwise, and how diverse futures can be imagined collectively through art. He is currently part of a research project in which he’s doing comics-ethnography with vocational school students.
Hoopee Lehkonen
H-P Lehkonen makes comics about environmental issues, society and problems with capitalism.
His comics “Immortal Nerd” and “Life Outside the Circle” were published by Webtoon in 2015-2019. Now he’s concentrating on studying social sciences and using comics for popularizing research.
HELSINKI COMICS FESTIVAL
The Finnish Comics Society has organized the Helsinki Comics Festival since 1979.
In the beginning, the festival was held in The Old Student House at the center of Helsinki, later in different areas around the city and this year at the Cable Factory in Salmisaari. Since the early years, the structure of the festival has remained similar, within the framework of different focus themes. The Helsinki Comics Festival offers public interviews with invited guests, panel discussions, performances, workshops and sales events for both larger publishing houses and small press creators.
Over the years, the festival has been visited by, among others, Will Eisner, Willem, Moebius, Marjane Satrapi, Morris, Joakim Pirinen, Neil Gaiman, Lise Myhre, Kate Charlesworth, Lilli Carré, Bryan and Mary Talbot and Paul Gravett, along with numerous Finnish comic artists. In nearly 40 years, the number of visitors has grown from about a thousand to up to 20,000 people annually.
Partner:
Questions? Email us