Gosha Elaev, Katariin Mudist, Risako Yamonoi, and Stephen Vuillemin
Curated by Chih-Tung LinWelcome to the exhibition finissage “The Dogs Days are Over”on Sunday 23rd of August (15-19)!
Tervetuloa näyttelyn lopettajaisiin sunnuntaina 23. elokuuta (15-19)!
During the dog days of summer, grass turns brown, flowers wither more quickly, and the garden comes to a standstill. However, these hottest days of the year are a reminder that visible growth is merely one part of a plant's story. In fact, plants are making critical decisions regarding their life circle—water usage, energy storage, and seed production. The quiet resilience of this season connotes a state of life that persists even when it appears as if nothing is happening at all judging the surface.
Titled ”Dog Days”, the exhibition unfolds during the hottest time of the year (also known as rot month, “mätäkuu” in Finnish) at K17, the historic grounds of the former Nikkilä Mental Hospital, featuring art works by Gosha Elaev, Katariin Mudist, Risako Yamonoi, and Stephen Vuillemin. Situated within the hospital’s former greenhouse, this iteration reflects on the site’s layered past—once a place of cultivation amid psychiatric care—and its transformation into an arts space fostering artistic expression and creative inquiry.
Inspired by plants such as perennials whose photosynthesis slow down while their growth appears to “pause” during the harsh heat, “Dog Days” examines dormancy as both resistance and necessity, exploring the ways individuals navigate uncertainty, hardships, institutional agencies, and social constructs. While perennial plants retreat beneath the surface only to reemerge with time, the exhibition looks at the contrast in the hospital’s history—where patients experienced prolonged stays, medical interventions, and shifting paradigms of care—the context casts a complex backdrop where pause was imposed rather than chosen, shaping lives through forces beyond individual control.
Reminiscing the Nikkilä Hospital Art Club led by the visual artist Rafael Wardi, also known as a pioneer of Finnish art therapy, for over 20 years since 1959, the exhibition dedicates its space to showcasing archival images from the Helsinki City Museum Archive of the Mental Hospital and a selection of the patients' art works created during rehabilitation. Through archival materials, site specific reimagination, and the selected art works, the exhibition invites a reconsideration of care, agency, time, and a state of existence where dormancy is embraced not as limitation but as forms of resilience and creativity, encouraging any states of existence while allowing meanings to unfold at its own pace.
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Stephen Vuillemin, born in 1986 in Besançon, is an animation director, comic book author, and illustrator. His first animated short film ‘A Kind of Testament’ premiered at the 2023 Berlinale, was shortlisted for the 2023 academy-awards, and won more than 40 awards in world-class film festivals such as Animafest Zagreb, Fantoche Baden and Go Shorts Nijmegen. Previously based in London and then Taipei, Vuillemin now resides between the French Jura and Tokyo.
Risako Yamanoi is a visual artist working with drawing, printmaking, installation, and publications. Yamanoi holds an MFA in Printmaking from the Academy of Fine Arts, Helsinki. Her recent exhibitions include a duo show at Titanik Gallery (Turku, 2025), a solo exhibition at Maa-Tila Project Space (Helsinki, 2025), and at Galleria G (Helsinki, 2023).
Gosha Elaev is a Siberian-born writer, artist and researcher from Tobolsk, Russia, currently residing in Bretagne, France. He lived and worked in Mongolia, Turkey, Georgia, Finland and Switzerland, and studied Philology and Cultural Theories at the University of Tyumen, Russia, Curatorial Practices at the University of Bergen, Norway and Cultural and Heritage Management at the Moscow School of Social and Economical Studies in Russia. His artistic practices include curating, installation and performances; he also has a passion for making comics about funny animals since early years of his life, when he was inspired by the famous Swedish series Bamse.
Katariin Mudist (b. 1994) is an Estonian artist working across sculpture, installation, drawing, and ceramics. Her practice explores the relationship between society and the individual through humor, irony, and material-based processes. Often working with repetition, collecting, and everyday objects, she examines value systems, recognition, productivity, and cultural expectations. Combining conceptual inquiry with a strong sensitivity to materials, she develops projects that move between the personal and the collective, translating social questions into physical forms and spatial situations.
Katariin’s work is supported by Cultural Endowment of Estonia.
Chih-Tung Lin (they/them) is a curator and artist based in Helsinki, Finland, originally from Taiwan. With a background in psychology and an MFA from the Praxis Exhibition Studies Program at the University of the Arts Helsinki, Lin approaches their work through an interdisciplinary lens. Their practice embraces playfulness and fluidity, often blurring the lines between curating and art-making. They explore topics through a range of methods—performance, curating, illustration, and publishing—intentionally avoiding confinement to a single medium. Central to their work are narratives around social relations and societal roles, often filtered through a psychological perspective.