AWARD
Linnamo Prize
The Linnamo Prize is a Finnish fine arts prize awarded by Olga and Vilho Linnamo Foundation every two years. The award is given in recognition of committed exploration shown in artistic practice. It is worth 15 000 euros and was awarded for the first time in 2021.
The prize is awarded in close collaboration with the artist-run cooperative Forum Box: in addition to the monetary acknowledgement, the price includes an opportunity to hold a solo exhibition at Forum Box gallery.
With the award the foundation seeks to acknowledge work that invigorates the expressive potentialities of art, modes of experimentality that often take place in the margins of the art world.
The Linnamo Prize is awarded to an experienced artist or artist group whose work can be anticipated to lead to interesting paths in the future. The recipients of the prize are expected to be either Finnish citizens or permanently living and working in Finland.
The recipient is decided by the board of trustees of Olga and Vilho Linnamo Foundation based on a proposal by a three-person jury composed of artists. In 2021-2023 the jury includes the following members: Markus Konttinen (b. 1957), Jani Ruscica (b. 1978) and Man Yau (b. 1991).
LINNAMO PRIZE 2025 AWARDED TO INTERDISCIPLINARY ARTIST TEO ALA-RUONA
Photo: Miikka Pirinen.
Press release, 16 October 2025 6 p.m. / Olga and Vilho Linnamo Foundation and Forum Box cooperative
Olga and Vilho Linnamo Foundation, in collaboration with the Forum Box cooperative, is awarding the Linnamo Prize for the third time, with a value of 15 000 euros. The prize is awarded to artist Teo Ala-Ruona in recognition of his committed interdisciplinary exploration of artistic practice. The prize committee characterises Ala-Ruona’s work as follows:
”Teo Ala-Ruona’s practice is marked by ambition, integrity, and meticulous refinement. In his performances, the body functions as a dynamic interface where the personal, political, intimate, and public converge. By examining what is considered “universally accepted” through the lenses of diversity and imperfection, Ala-Ruona’s works question prevailing notions of gender, ecology, and sexuality. His practice invites reflection on the meaning of normalcy in contemporary society—particularly within Western culture—and, more profoundly, on the origins of the assumptions that shape our understanding of it. Rooted in extensive collaboration and a strong research-driven approach, Ala-Ruona’s art articulates invigorating new perspectives on the multiplicity of embodied experience. By situating his performances within the contexts of visual art and working in close dialogue with visual artists, Ala-Ruona also challenges our received notions on the contours of visual art and the exhibition format itself.”
TEO ALA-RUONA
Teo Ala-Ruona (b.1990) is an interdisciplinary artist based in Helsinki, working in the fields of performance, contemporary theatre, and choreography. His practice explores the potential of somatic fiction to shift our perceptions of the human body, navigating the intersections of linguistic, semiotic, and biological existence. He explores how trans experience can broaden our understanding of what the body can be, approaching the examination of trans embodiment as an autopsy of society’s conception of the body.
Working with the stage as a site for speculative narratives, he investigates how alternative performance politics can transform the perceptual frameworks of both performer and audience. Grounded in theory and embodied scores, his work treats the performer as both a reflective surface and an active agent in negotiating inherited categories and challenging the conventions of normalcy. He finds joy in the weird and the risky on stage, weaving choreographed audience engagement with emotional and psychological tension.
Ala-Ruona’s work has been shown in the 19th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia (Venice, 2025), Performa Biennial (New York), Fundació Joan Miró Museum (Barcelona), The Vilnius Biennial of Performance Art (Vilnius), The Finnish National Gallery Kiasma (Helsinki), The Institute of Contemporary Arts in London (London), Sequences Festival (Reykjavik), Centrale Fies (Dro) and Toaster/Husets Teater (Copenhagen). Ala-Ruona holds a Master of Arts in Theatre from the Theatre Academy of the University of the Arts Helsinki (2018) and a Master of Arts from Aalto University (2016).
LINNAMO PRIZE
The Linnamo Prize is a Finnish fine arts prize awarded by Olga and Vilho Linnamo Foundation biannually. The award is given in recognition of committed exploration shown in artistic practice. It is worth 15 000 euros and will be awarded for the third time in 2023. The prize is awarded in close collaboration with the artist-run cooperative Forum Box: in addition to the monetary acknowledgement, the prize includes an opportunity to hold a solo exhibition at Forum Box gallery.
With the award, the foundation seeks to acknowledge work that invigorates the expressive potentialities of art and modes of experimentality that often take place in the margins of the art world. The Linnamo Prize is awarded to an experienced artist or artist group whose work can be anticipated to lead to interesting paths in the future. The recipients of the prize are expected to be either Finnish citizens or permanently living and working in Finland. The recipient is decided by the board of trustees of Olga and Vilho Linnamo Foundation based on a proposal by a three-person jury composed of artists. In 2023-2025 the jury includes the following members: Kaisaleena Halinen (b. 1973), Jani Ruscica (b. 1978) and Man Yau (b. 1991).
Images:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1fg9vyCX_Ss_wIcIMVu58zuonxiImKzfq?usp=drive_link
Further information:
Olga and Vilho Linnamo Foundation
Marko Karo
Chairperson
[email protected]
+358 50 547 1836
Member of the Jury
Jani Ruscica
[email protected]
+358 40 708 5361
Links:
Mervi Kytösalmi-Buhl: PUNAINEN
Forum Box
3.–26.10.2025
In October, Forum Box gallery presents the solo exhibition by Mervi Kytösalmi-Buhl, titled Punainen.
The exhibition Punainen presents the latest production as well as previous works from the 2000s and 2010s of Mervi Kytösalmi-Buhl, a pioneer of Finnish video and performance art. The exhibition’s object assemblages, textile works and installations playfully raise sensitive and difficult issues such as loss and grief. The central theme of the exhibition is concern about the rapid change in natural and residential environments. The works, with their animal motifs and winter worlds, allude to changing ecological conditions and the effects that technological development has on human lifestyles. The exhibition reminds us of the importance of cherishing the present moment and the transience of time in its inexorable passage.
The exhibition is part of the Linnamo Prize, which the Olga and Vilho Linnamo Foundation and the Forum Box cooperative awarded to Kytösalmi-Buhl in 2023. Awarding the price recognises Kytösalmi-Buhl’s significant, individual artistic practice that has paved its own path in the field of Finnish art.
Mervi Kytösalmi-Buhl (b.1948 Imatra) is an artist living in Cologne and Ruokolahti, whose work includes photography, object assemblages, drawings, textile works and installations. Kytösalmi-Buhl, who graduated from the Düsseldorf Academy of Fine Arts in 1981, is also one of the pioneers of Finnish video and performance art. Her works have been exhibited in Finland and at video festivals and group exhibitions in Europe and the United States.
More information on the exhibition and Mervi Kytösalmi-Buhl's work:
LINNAMO PRIZE 2023 AWARDED TO VISUAL ARTIST MERVI KYTÖSALMI-BUHL
Press release 23 November 2023 6 p.m. / Olga and Vilho Linnamo Foundation and Forum Box cooperative
The Olga and Vilho Linnamo Foundation, in collaboration with the Forum Box cooperative, is awarding the Linnamo Prize for the second time, with a value of 15 000 euros. The prize is awarded to visual artist Mervi Kytösalmi-Buhl (b. 1948) in recognition of her dedicated exploration of artistic practice. The prize committee characterises Kytösalmi-Buhl’s work as follows:
”Mervi Kytösalmi-Buhl is one of the pioneers of Finnish video art, and her work from the 1970s and 1980s is undeniably considered a starting point for video art in Finland. She studied at the Düsseldorf Academy of Fine Arts in the 1970s under the guidance of figures such as Joseph Beuys and Nam Jun Paik. Kytösalmi-Buhl approaches the body as a plastic and sculptural material in a complex interaction and interdependence with the video camera, her preferred medium of choice in her earlier works. Here the artist’s own body deconstructs and con-structs the concepts of gender and subjectivity performatively. In more recent works, the body is physically more distant; it is mnemonic, fragile, and symbolically present, always in relation to various materialities. For Kytösalmi-Buhl, art has always been a way to restructure her relationship with the surrounding space and reality, regardless of the context or medium of the works. Awarding the Lin-namo Prize in 2023 to Mervi Kytösalmi-Buhl recognises her significant, individual artistic practice that has paved its own path in the field of Finnish art.”
MERVI KYTÖSALMI-BUHL
Mervi Kytösalmi-Buhl was born in Imatra, Finland, and studied in Germany at the Cologne University of Fine Arts and the Düsseldorf Academy of Fine Arts. Notably, her instructors at the latter institution included Joseph Beuys and Nam June Paik. Kytösalmi-Buhl currently resides and works in Cologne, Germany, while spending her summers in Ruokolahti, Finland.
Between 1978 and 1984, Mervi Kytösalmi-Buhl created an extensive body of video works, widely regarded as the starting point for performance-based video art in Finland. The key elements of her works are body, movement, space, and time. In more recent works, Kytösalmi-Buhl has produced photographs, object assemblages, and textile sculptures. Her works can be found in the collection of institutions such as the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma.
LINNAMO PRIZE
The Linnamo Prize is a Finnish fine arts prize awarded by Olga and Vilho Linnamo Foundation biannually. The award is given in recognition of committed exploration shown in artistic practice. It is worth 15 000 euros and will be awarded for the second time in 2023.
The prize is awarded in close collaboration with the artist-run cooperative Forum Box: in addition to the monetary acknowledgement, the prize includes an opportunity to hold a solo exhibition at Forum Box gallery.
With the award, the foundation seeks to acknowledge work that invigorates the expressive potentialities of art and modes of experimentality that often take place in the margins of the art world.
The Linnamo Prize is awarded to an experienced artist or artist group whose work can be anticipated to lead to interesting paths in the future. The recipients of the prize are expected to be either Finnish citizens or permanently living and working in Finland.
The recipient is decided by the board of trustees of Olga and Vilho Linna-mo Foundation based on a proposal by a three-person jury composed of artists. In 2021-2023 the jury includes the following members: Markus Konttinen (b. 1957), Jani Ruscica (b. 1978) and Man Yau (b. 1991).
Images:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-UqXdQUxMJeMKy2UBOmdencxzfLUUeyh?usp=sharing
Further information:
Olga and Vilho Linnamo Foundation
Marko Karo
Chairperson
[email protected]
+358 50 547 1836
Member of the jury
Jani Ruscica
[email protected]
+358 40 708 5361
Links:
https://www.av-arkki.fi/fi/artists/mervi-kytosalmi-buhl/
James Prevett: TOGETHER WITH
Forum Box
3.-26.11.2023
In November, Forum Box gallery provides a stage for artist James Prevett’s exhibition entitled Together With. True to its title, the exhibition showcases works that Prevett has made together with other people.
Together With is part of the Linnamo Prize awarded to Prevett in 2021 for his committed and open-minded artistic practice. The exhibition includes live radio broadcasts from the gallery and beyond, events, workshops, and documentation of works made over the past eight years.
James Prevett has two intersecting methods of artistic practice: studio-based making and a social practice. Both revolve around sculpture and its social relations. Prevett often works with other people to explore these relations on the one hand and to bring an open-ended and poly-vocal approach to art making on the other. Rather than being a finished product, the artwork is more a catalyst gathering people together to seek unforeseen possibilities. When we make things together, we collectivise our voice and challenge understandings of art and creativity.
More information on the exhibition and James Prevett’s work:
LINNAMO PRIZE AWARDED FOR THE FIRST TIME – VISUAL ARTIST JAMES PREVETT SELECTED AS THE FIRST RECIPIENT OF THE AWARD
Press release 24 November 2021 6 p.m. | Olga and Vilho Linnamo Foundation and Forum Box cooperative
In collaboration with the Forum Box cooperative, Olga and Vilho Linnamo Foundation awards for the first time the Linnamo Prize, a new fine arts award worth 15 000 euros. The first prize is awarded to the Helsinki-based sculptor James Prevett (b.1977) in recognition of committed exploration in artistic practice. The award committee elaborates the selection as follows:
"The sculptor James Prevett's art practice can be described as contemporary sculpture in a state of constant change. He embraces that which is going on around him and often the end result is something unpredictable and surprising. Instead of being limited to an embodied practice with materials, Prevett's art combine elements of research and social action, focusing on situations, spaces and the people engaging in them. What resonates underneath all this is a profound fascination for the social significance of art, for that which is created by activating and engaging with one's surroundings and its participants with a view to new and unfamiliar configurations of the everyday. By expanding both the spatial and the social reach of sculpture from the institutions of the art world towards the city space, the domestic realm, as well as the range of social media, James Prevett's work has provided the field of contemporary sculpture in Finland with inspiring and invigorating new perspectives."
JAMES PREVETT
James Prevett is a British artist living and working in Helsinki since 2013. He creates things to gather around - objects, events, text, video that are often combined as sculpture. Prevett is interested in sculpture as means to explore the limits of minds and bodies, both personal and communal. His work draws on many influences from music to poetry to the histories of monuments. Prevett enjoys collaborating with other people, embracing the creativity and unpredictability that comes with making things together. He thinks everybody can and should ‘make’, and that this can bring unexpected beauty to the world.
Prevett has exhibited widely in the UK and internationally in countries such as Finland, Thailand, Singapore, USA, Austria and Brazil. He was part of a team of artists, musicians and architects selected to represent Great Britain at the Venice Biennale of Architecture 2006. His ongoing series Patsastellaan: Parties for Public Sculpture invites artists to make something new for an existing public sculpture in Helsinki. He is currently a Sculpture Lecturer at the Academy of Fine Arts, Helsinki.
Images:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1jujLtPi94E8Eed2UqBLiwXMzOTpBRCzh?usp=sharing
Further information:
Olga and Vilho Linnamo Foundation
Marko Karo
Chairperson
[email protected]
+358 50 547 1836
Member of the jury
Jani Ruscica
[email protected]
+358 40 708 5361
Links: