15.1.—22.2.2026

‘As any working artist knows, art practice that proceeds under the shadow of theory is doomed to be mere allegory; and as every working aesthetician knows, theories of art bound to particular historical practices are doomed to apologetics. Here, I am merely recapitulating, under other terms, Kant’s well-known axiom that ‘concepts without percepts are empty; percepts without concepts are blind’.’ – Susan Stewart, ‘On the Art of the Future’, 20031

I will start this first exhibition text of 2026 with the most optimistic and future-oriented statement I can muster right now: Happy New Year!

In the essay that I quote here, the eminent American scholar, theorist, critic, poet and translator Susan Stewart argues that ‘what the practice of art in general might be for is the carrying forward of a practice of ethical encounters between persons’.2 I sense that her expressly secular – and anything but de-politicised – vision of how aesthetics and ethics may be fused in practice can show us, all of us who care about the arts, a way forward through difficult times.

Stewart’s insights may be coated in a language of ‘art in general’, but they coincide with what Kohta is specifically trying to achieve with its exhibition programme: a continuous openness to what she calls ‘art’s hypothetical and incomplete aspects’.3 They also speak to artist Benjamin Orlow’s mindset when he launched St. Chads, his independent exhibition space in London, in 2022.

Orlow, who is from Turku but has lived in London since 2009, is known for his hypothetical and incomplete anthropomorphic sculptures in materials such as bronze, ceramics or unfired clay. He was one of the artists in the group exhibition Näkypaikka at Kohta in 2023 and will represent Finland in the Nordic Pavilion at the 61st Venice Biennale later this year. He has also just joined the Kohta Council, which decides about our programming. Welcome, Benjamin!

St. Chads is named after one of the smaller streets behind the former Royal National Throat, Nose and Ear Hospital at King’s Cross in central London. Orlow has lived in the sprawling complex since 2020, under so-called guardianship conditions: people, often younger creatives, are given access to lower-rent housing and work spaces to prevent temporarily disused buildings in the city centre from being squatted.

The exhibition space is a former ambulance storage and has (like its smaller pendant Penton Rise, a former tool shed added to the project in 2024) become Orlow’s platform for inviting other artists to exhibit. There is no fundraising, no monitoring of visitor numbers, even no press release. The sole focus is art itself and practices that he subjectively finds interesting.

Until now Orlow has organised 30 exhibitions in this way, inviting not only peers in London but also other artists of various generations, from different countries, whose work he appreciates and is curious about.

He says: ‘There is currently a tendency to over-determine and over-explain art in ways that I find flattening. This stems from a mistrust in art’s capabilities and a fear of ambiguity and freedom of interpretation. With St. Chads I want to explore how a work of art resonates and develops without being overly contextualised and defined. I want to see how it behaves when you rely on its own unmediated agency. I believe that this forces viewers to develop a personal relationship to what they experience, and to rely on and explore their own subjectivity in the process.’

Kohta invited Orlow to propose artists from St. Chad’s programme for our first exhibition slot in 2026, and together with him we decided to divide it into two exhibitions. In the larger gallery, we show ‘Weathered Together’, a joint presentation of recent and new work by Maija Fox (UK/Finland, 1998) and Bianca Hlywa (Canada/UK, 1992).

Orlow says: ‘They both work at an impossible scale and have become intimately familiar with industrial-grade production processes. There is something primeval, almost mythical, about Maija’s way of working: the small individual taking on colossal powers. And in Bianca’s work the level of difficulty – to produce, transport, store and install these huge, living, decomposing, flesh-like curtains – means that all aspects of her practice are working against her. This is then juxtaposed with the determination and relentlessness that comes through in everything she does.’

To this I could add my own observation that both are ‘thinking artists’, as opposed to artists who by instinct or conscious decision rely on intuition and emotion. That, I believe, is why they consistently short-circuit (and thereby in effect enhance) the intellectual and societal underpinnings of their work with its bodily presence and impact. For Fox it is the feminist dimension of doing physically demanding metal work, and also the use of materials and forms and objects that draw on her own family background in farming and smithery. For Hlywa it is a critique of value that puts the white-cube exhibition space at risk of contamination by an ‘alien’ material, and also an interest in the theory of materiality and the history of whirling as a religious or spiritual practice.

ways that roam us (2024–26) is a substantial installation by Maija Fox that was previously shown at Titanik in Turku but has now been expanded for Kohta’s larger gallery. It consists of four cubicles articulated with patinated steel profiles and sheets, each containing sculptural forms made from hard, unyielding materials. Those evoke use-objects from rural working environments – a carved granite latrine, a cast aluminium stile and log basket or the outlines of a wheelbarrow in forged steel – and replicate details from nature in cast aluminium, such as eucalyptus and maple seeds (used as bolt heads) or stinging nettles. This adds a complicating granular texture to the austere architectural monumentality of the overall gesture.

In this and other works, Fox weaves together seemingly disparate lived experiences of labour, those of the blacksmith and the sculptor, the agriculturist and the artist. It is as if she were striving to upgrade ‘genre painting’ (scenes from the picturesque lives of peasants, one of the lowest-ranking categories of traditional academic art) into ‘history painting’ (its most prestigious pinnacle, allegories of political power using multiple figures in complex arrangements) – but of course without touching the physical practice of painting at all.

Look out for her upcoming solo exhibition at Sinne in Helsinki, opening in March!

Bianca Hlywa’s Mute Track (2025–26) is the latest of several versions of an installation featuring SCOBYs (Symbiotic Cultures of Bacterial Yeast). For almost a decade, she has been growing such bacteria and yeast microbial skins in sealed vats under controlled conditions, a process that takes several months. The SCOBY is stitched to a webbing structure and attached to a ceiling-mounted metal structure with an electric motor that makes it rotate at gradually increasing speed, until the movement stops and then restarts. The title refers to an original idea of making the rotation follow the rhythm of a specific song – but without letting audiences hear it.

Hlywa describes her own reaction, one of intense and simultaneous intellectual interest and instinctive repulsion, when she lifted her first SCOBY out of her parents’ bathtub, where she had been growing it in an acrylic box. In its first incarnations (this is somehow a live substance) the SCOBY was about the slow reveal, and about how large and heavy the skin could become. The rotation was added later, and with it the flipping and flickering image of the SCOBY revealing itself at high speeds, which has become an intrinsic part of the work.

For growing the two SCOBYs installed at Kohta, Hlywa has collaborated with Rudy’s Brewing Company, a kombucha brewery in Kuldīga, Latvia. A new feature in this installation is that one of the triangular-shaped skins has been cut into strips while the other remains intact. This will create two distinct shapes and patterns of movement.

Maija Fox’s work is supported by the Kone Foundation and Kemppi, a welding equipment company. Bianca Hlywa’s work is supported by the Canada Council for the Arts.

Helsinki, January 2026

-Anders Kreuger
Director, Kunsthalle Kohta