NB We are in rest and reflection mode at the moment, focussing on existing commitments and dreaming about future plans. We welcome invitations to collaborate, and will answer emails mostly on Mondays. Thanks for your interest in our work, unfortunately we don’t have the capacity to host interns or student placement positions.
Feminist Culture House is an intersectional feminist organisation based in Helsinki, Finland. It is a curatorial and editorial platform that works with and for underrepresented artists, and produces tools for more equitable collaborations within the arts. Its current working group members are Gladys Camilo, Katie Lenanton, and Paola Jalili, who work closely with a working group of curators, artists, arts workers and researcher associates. From 2019-21, FCH operated with the kind support of the Kone Foundation. We are a non-profit association, and have a steering group that we turn to for consultation and support.
Our aim is to function as a supportive structure for those who are practicing in the Finnish art field, but due to—for example—structural racism and cis-sexism, have to work harder to be recognised. We aim to create a caring and inclusive feminist working community that is based on sharing, togetherness, celebrating, and supporting one’s peers.
FCH is currently based in feminist, anti-racist studio space Poimu in Pasila, Helsinki, which we have been part of setting up.
About intersectionality
For us, feminism means hope. It means action against cis-hetero patriarchy*, a shared resistance against norms, and solidarity towards all oppressed and ignored. For us, feminism is intersectional**: we recognise that systems of discrimination and oppression interlock with our social and political identities, and that our positions and experiences are always different. Therefore, feminism is a process of learning about ourselves, our positions in the world, and about connections we hold towards other humans and beings. It’s about learning to recognise our challenges as well as our privileges, and about creating equality for all. It means we are never complete, always many, always partial and continuously undone by others.
About curating
For us, curating means an agency that is centred around listening and being active, responsive, and responsible. We understand the word curatorial as the research that critically examines the act of curating itself: the practices, traditions, structures, and conventions behind staging exhibitions. A curatorial practice is inherently collaborative, and we work to create conditions for collaborations with artists, arts workers, and others, that would make people want to continue working together.
We publicly acknowledge that the State of Finland is founded on the lands of the Sámi people, the Finnish people, and many others. We pay our respects to the Sámi people as the indigenous inhabitants of the Sápmi area, and we recognise their rights as an indigenous people. We recognise and respect their sovereignty, their culture, their custodianship, and their continuing contribution to the life of this state. We welcome feedback about the phrasing of this statement.
*Cis-Heteropatiarchy is a system of power and control that positions cis-straight white males as superior and normative. An assumed logic of deficiencies and static binaries undergirds the continued socio-cultural, legal and institutional marginalisation of, for example, multiple gender and sexual identities, that do not conform with heteronormativity.
**Intersectionality comes from Black feminism and it is a term coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989. Intersectionality is the cumulative way in which multiple forms of discrimination and oppression (such as racism, ablism, cis-sexism) overlap and intersect.