Jury

Chairperson of the Jury, Vice Chairperson of the Board, Phd, Dr. Admin. Sc. Hc, Board Professional, Venture Capitalist

Dr. Leena Niemistö is a board member in several publicly listed companies (Pihlajalinna, Raisio, Nexstim, Nightingale Health, Digital Workforce Sevices), startups, organisations and foundations. She is also an active investor in several healthtech and cleantech growth companies. Leena Niemistö has worked as a CEO in a private healthcare company Dextra (yrs 2003–2016) and a deputy CEO in a social and healthcare company Pihlajalinna (yrs 2013-2016). She has for example been recognised as the the Business Angel Exit of the year 2019 by FiBAN. She received Women’s Board Award in Finland in 2019. Leena Niemistö is the Alumna 2023 at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Helsinki. Her role as a chairman of the Finnish National Opera and Ballet corresponds her own life-long and deep interest towards art and music.

Member of the Jury, Visual Artist

Eija-Liisa Ahtila is known as a pioneer and innovator of moving images, with works situated in the borderland between film and visual art. She served as a professor in the Time and Space Arts program at the Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki from 2007 to 2010. Ahtila has participated in numerous international art exhibitions, including the Venice Biennale (1999 and 2005), documenta 11 (2002), the São Paulo Art Biennial (2008), and the Sydney Biennale in 2002 and 2018. Her works are part of the collections at Tate Museum and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. In 2021, she was awarded the Ars Fennica Prize.

Member of the Jury, Dean (Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki)

Leevi Haapala (PhD) has been a Dean at the Academy of Fine Arts since 2024. He worked as the Museum Director at the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma in Helsinki 2015–2024; as a Professor in Exhibition Studies, for the MA Program Praxis in Academy of Fine Arts, University of Arts in Helsinki 2014–2015; a Curator and Deputy Chief Curator for Collections at the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma 2007–2014, and a researcher at the Central Art Archives at the Finnish National Gallery (1997–2003). He has been a member of the editorial team for the FNG Research online publication 2015–2024, and a member of the Uniarts Helsinki Board 2022–2024.

Museum Director (Ham Helsinki Art Museum)

Arja Miller joined Helsinki Art Museum (HAM) and Helsinki Biennial as director in March 2023. Prior to this, she was Chief Curator of EMMA, Espoo Museum of Modern Art (2017–2023) and Chief Curator of Collections at Kiasma, Museum of Contemporary Art (2008–2017). She has worked with numerous prominent artists, such as Pierre Huyghe, Elmgreen & Dragset, Chiharu Shiota, Daniel Buren, Tatsuo Miyajima and Alicja Kwade. Miller has also curated thematic group exhibitions, including ”In Search of the Present” at EMMA, which explored the relationship between art, technology, and nature. She has co-curated major international group shows at Kiasma, such as ARS11 and ARS17, which focused on contemporary African art and artists’ responses to the digital revolution, respectively. An accomplished writer, her areas of focus include museums as discursive spaces, installation art, new media art, and the intersections of art, sound, and music. She holds a Master of Arts degree from the University of Helsinki (1997) and a qualification in Business management in the museum context from the Management Institute of Finland (2012–2014).