Join acclaimed contemporary artists Teija and Pekka Isorättyä and director Jonni Roos as they premiere their film The Artist Family Isorättyä, a documentary about the artist duo’s unique family practice.
The screening will be followed by a discussion between Pekka, Teija and curator Kathleen Forde.
About Teija and Pekka Isorättyä
Pekka & Teija Isorättyä (both born 1980, Finland) work together in a shared process of creating. They work with various media, but perhaps most notably with kinetic sculptures and electromechanical sculptures. The Isorättyä’s sculptures reflect the problematic and close relationship between man and machine and between nature and machine. How do we convey our human values and conceptions by creating machines for different purposes?
Pekka and Teija met in kindergarten. They later studied together at Aalto University department of Art and Design in Helsinki where they received Masters of Arts in 2010. They welcomed their son Iisakki in November 2015 and now he is included in their creative process, where work, family time, travels and adventures mixes.
The couple has lived and worked in various places. Their artistic career started in Mexico City 2007 where they exhibited in various art museums and worked with the Polka Madre orchestra until 2010. The Isorättyäs then ran their own art space called Invalid Robot Factory in Berlin’s Neukölln neighborhood until 2013. From 2013-2015 they traveled in Japan, Mexico, and around the Baltic in a sailboat. The Isorättyäs have been working in art communities such as Gängeviertel of Hamburg and C.A.P Kobe in Japan. They are currently doing an artist residency at ISCP in New York.
About Kathleen Forde
Kathleen Forde is a curator based in NYC and Istanbul. Forde is the Artistic Director at Large for Borusan Contemporary, a collection-based space for media arts exhibitions, commissions and public programming in Istanbul. During her tenure at BC Forde has curated and toured numerous solo exhibitions by artists such as Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Daniel Canogar, Brigitte Kowanz and John Gerrard, and collaborated with curators and institutions that include the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Espacio Telefonica Madrid, La Boral Gijon and the Kunsthalle Darmstadt. Concurrently she is working as an independent curator with various institutions both nationally and abroad.
From 2005 to 2012 Forde was the Curator of Time-Based Visual Arts at the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC) in Troy, NY. At EMPAC she commissioned and/or produced a broad range of new work by artists that included The Wooster Group, Laurie Anderson, Japanther, Jem Cohen and Ben Rubin, and curated exhibitions such as Dancing on the Ceiling: Art and Zero Gravity.
Prior to EMPAC, Forde was the Curatorial Director for Live Arts and New Media at the Goethe Institut Internaciones in Berlin and Munich. As Curatorial Associate and then Assistant Curator for Media Arts at SFMOMA (1999–2002), she co-curated the interdisciplinary show 010101: Art in Technological Times in addition to ongoing work with both temporary and permanent collection exhibitions.
She has also written and/or curated on a freelance basis for various organizations that have included the Eyebeam Center for Art and Technology; The University of Michigan Museum of Art (UMMA); Independent Curators International; The Transmediale Festival, Berlin; Kunstverein Dusseldorf and Cologne; VideoZone, Tel Aviv; the Rotterdam Film Festival; and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. She sits on the board of Issue Project Room, NY, and on the Advisory Committees for the SETI Institute Artist in Residence Program and the Moving Image Art Fair, Istanbul.
In 2010 Forde was a fellow in the 2010 Center for Curatorial Leadership (CCL) fellowship class and held an Alexander von Humboldt research scholarship in Berlin from 2002–2003. She earned an MA in Post-1945 Art and Theory from Goldsmiths College, University of London, and a BA in Communications and Art History from the Loyola College of Maryland.
June 1, 2017
June 1, 2017
Image courtesy of Teija and Pekka Isorättyä
THU—6-1-2017—7 PM, free
30 min. In Finnish with English subtitles.
Co-hosted by the Finnish Cultural Institute and ISCP New York