Seinäjoki city’s cultural services hires a summer artist for the tenth time. Overall, 56 applicants applied for the position of the Summer Artist within the deadline. The summer job organized by Kunsthalle Seinäjoki gives the artist an opportunity to do artistic work and the citizens a way to get to know different ways of practicing and experience art. In honor of the anniversary year, Kunsthalle is hosting the group exhibition “Flashback,” which showcases new art works by former summer artists. The exhibition is running until August 8th, 2026. To celebrate the anniversary year, Kunsthalle will have a summer party in the form of a performance club on Friday, August 7th, 2026.
The 10th anniversary
Gabriella Presnal will be the tenth Summer Artist in Seinäjoki beginning their job on the 22nd of June and ending the work period on the 23rd of August 2026. Since the program has its anniversary year, the theme of the summer is celebration. During the summer, Gabriella Presnal will carry out the art project Meadow Pods that consists of multiple hollow, hanging sculptures containing meadow seeds within. Together with the artist, the local community will be invited to destroy the sculptures, releasing the seeds into local spaces to be enjoyed all by. The sculptures will be modeled after native seeds and uses bio composite; organic material sourced from the local community and foraging.
The project has been influenced by multiple celebrations that involve breaking, cracking, or smashing. Especially by Mexican piñatas, but similarly, the Greek Orthodox Botides, the Chinese folk ritual “whipping the spring cattle” (dǎ chūnniú), and the foraged flowers of midsummer, which are believed to aid in dreaming of future love. Many celebrate renewal, harvests, growth, and ecological rhythms.
The project asks: who gets to celebrate, how do we celebrate, and what are the implications of our festivities? How do they weave themselves into our environments, daily habits, and our memories? The project consists of participatory workshops and public events that are aiming to celebrate the local environment by creating space for hopes, dreams, and concrete actions for the environment.
The artist
Gabriella Presnal (b.2001, they/them) is a Finnish American artist having previously lived in Sweden, Canada, Denmark, and the U.S. Conceptually, they draw upon philosophies surrounding spatiality, publicness, and cultural memory. Alongside their own cultural background, an integral influence to their work has been Gilles Deleuze’s and Félix Guattari’s theories of nomad art wherein they apply the characteristics of spaces to textile methods.
For Presnal, multidisciplinary textiles then become a model for subverting, warping, and molding spaces. Many times, their works integrate community-centric and participatory approaches, having previously created projects surrounding precarity, post-anthropocentrism, utopias, queer international youth, and more.
Ongoing and upcoming works (summer 2026) from Presnal are currently with Amos Rex (Generation 2026), ArtOulu2026 (performance programming), a solo exhibition in MUU ry’s Ikkuna / Window Gallery (Helsinki), and the Rihmasto / Rhizome group exhibition at Haihatus (Joutsa). They have a history of exhibiting primarily in Finland as well as group exhibitions and festivals abroad, for example, in Brazil, Australia, Korea, Italy, Slovenia, and more. They have recently graduated from a dual master’s degree program in Nordic Visual Studies and Art Education from Aalto University and Aalborg University.
About the Summer Artist
Each summer since 2017, City of Seinäjoki has hired a visual artist or visual art student to work as the Summer Artist. The Summer Artist, “Kesäkuvataiteilija” in Finnish, works for two months with their own independent artistic project. The idea is to show different ways of making art, engage the local community and experience contemporary art in the making. The Summer Artist works at the Kunsthalle Seinäjoki and has the resources and support of the team and the Cultural Services of Seinäjoki. The theme of the project is different each year but there is always a strong emphasis on participatory and process-based work-methods and temporary public art.
Previous Summer Artists:
- Emmi Kairenius 2025
- Henri Airo 2024
- Baran Caginli 2023
- Olivia Viitakangas 2022
- Riikka Gröndahl 2021
- Sofi Häkkinen 2020
- Aeon Lux 2019
- Eetu Kevarinmäki 2018
- Julia Kukkonen 2017
Follow the project and artist:
Follow the Summer Artist in social media channels on Facebook and Instagram during the summer. On the channel you can also access projects realized by Summer Artists from previous years. In addition, Kunsthalle Seinäjoki and City of Seinäjoki will share news about the Summer Artist in their own social media channels.
Summer Artist: https://www.seinajoentaidehalli.fi/en/projects/
Instagram: @kesakuvataiteilija @gabriellapresnal
Website: https://gabriellapresnal.com/
Download press photos: Press photos
More information:
Pii Anttila
Art Producer
Kunsthalle Seinäjoki
pii.anttila@seinajoki.fi, tel. +358 44 425 5823
www.seinajoentaidehalli.fi