Niina Tervo (Oulu, 1983) creates multimedia art, using mostly sculpture and installation. Her works are based on scientific and philosophical reflections on life, its structure and underlying forces. The materiality of Tervo’s sculptures alludes to the existence and imperceptibility of forces, through which she explores the interrelations between things and their intrinsic connections with their environment. Tervo's works form an abstract, but apparently ordinary space, a process that makes the artist and the viewer a part of the research and the artwork itself. Along with her own working Tervo is also actively working in collaborations, and is a member of an artist run contemporary art space SIC (HKI), a founding member of Open Greenhouse (HKI), a collaborative gardening and cultural space, and a founding member of upcoming Test Kitchen (HKI), which concentrates on bringing together artists who shares interested in food as artistic material. Through these collaborations she studies the supportive structures that collaborations can offer and benefits of shared thinking, partly to further investigate and an idea of thinking as larger shared entity.

Tervo finished her MA from the Academy of Fine Arts Helsinki 2018 and BSc in biology in 2010, specialising in plant ecology and urban ecology. She has participated exhibitions Galerie Im Körnerpark, Berlin, The Community, Paris, The Kiasma museum of contemporary art, Helsinki, Helsinki Art Museum, and Wäinö Aaltonen museum, Turku. She also had a solo show in Helsinki Art Museum Gallery Space and Galerie Anhava (HKI), and is currently part of a group exhibition at Oulu Art Museum (Finland). Tervo was also a resident an the Jan Van Eyck Academy in the Netherlands 2019-2020 and in the Cité Internationales des Paris in 2023. This year she is invited to take part in Hamuro residency in Awara, Japan.

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(Text: Rosa de Graaf and Niina Tervo)