Juliana Irene Smith, Arvid van der Rijt and Lahja Kotov present an installation at K17
exploring the spectacle of the everyday. While their visual languages differ
considerably, the three artists share an approach that transforms deeply personal
material into immersive and often extravagant forms.
Their practices are informed by subculture, fashion, music, nostalgia and day-to-day
movement. These references appear as fragments, atmospheres and gestures that
move between intimacy, violence, coping and excess. What may initially appear playful
or glamorous reveals another undercurrent: a negotiation with vulnerability and
instability.
Within this space, themes of destruction, survival and anxiety unfold alongside moments
of humour, spectacle and tenderness. The works reflect on how individuals endure
difficult times — how pain, memory and desire are transformed into forms of expression,
performance and escape.
Through this shared installation at K17, the artists create an environment where
personal narratives expand into something collective: a landscape where fragility,
resilience and excess coexist, and where survival itself becomes a creative act.
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Lahja Kotov is a Helsinki-based artist working mainly with photography, textiles and
kinetic objects. Her practice often begins from personal experience, weaving together
fragments of memory, material, and movement. Drawing on trans identity and
autotheoretical approaches, her work reflects on themes of absence, transformation,
and the ways to navigate the tension between visibility and vulnerability.
Juliana Irene Smith is a California-born, half Iranian artist, mother and activist who has
been living and working in Finland for nearly a decade. Her work embodies the feminist
theory that the personal is collective which is political, as well as dark humor and
pushing forward. She holds a Bachelors Degree in Photography from Parsons School of
Design in New York and a Masters Degree in Public Art from the HSLU in Switzerland.
She left New York in 2003 and has also lived in South Africa, Palestine and Switzerland.
Recent exhibitions include: Summer Rain, a group exhibition curated by Eeva Holkeri at
the Taidehalli Helsinki (2025), Scaredy Cat - Boo! A solo exhibition at Photographic
Centre Peri in Turku (2025), Saggy Wednesday a solo at Verkligheten Gallery, Umeå
(2025) and Who’s Your Daddy? At Titanik in Turku (2026). In October 2025, Smith
published her first book GOOD FEELINGS EVERY DAY with Utu Press.
Arvid van der Rijt is a Dutch-Eurasian cultural worker and audiovisual artist with over
20 years of experience in the Finnish and international contemporary art field.
In his artistic practice he makes use of multiple media and materials. He brings together
the bricolage of everyday trash, colonial knickknacks and Western kitsch, building a
symbiosis of the imaginable, the visible and the invisible. His immersive performances
deal with the concepts of belonging and identity and build new constellations and
labyrinths to help us find new ways of being lost, if nothing else.
Arvid currently lives and works in Helsinki. His work has been shown in Finland and
abroad including the Ann Arbor Film Festival, USA (2016), Scratch Expanded @Light
Cone, Paris, FRA (2016), the Congo Biennale in Kinshasa, DRC (2019), the AAVE
Festival, Helsinki (2014) and Pixelache Festival, Helsinki (2021).
Photos: Lahja Kotov