Terike Haapoja is a visual artist based in New York. With a specific focus on multispecies coexistence, Haapoja’s work investigates the existential and political boundaries of our world. Haapoja’s work raises questions about how different structures of exclusion and discrimination function as foundations for identity and culture. The notion of a world that is deeply rooted in the embodied entanglements of beings and their multiple lifeworlds is at the core of Haapoja’s politically and ethically driven practice.
Haapoja approaches the previously mentioned themes by building up large projects, often realized in the forms of video installations, related publications and participatory acts. Collaborations with author Laura Gustafsson under the name Gustafsson&Haapoja explore problems arising from the anthropocentric worldview of Western traditions. Haapoja’s work has been exhibited widely in solo and group shows internationally, recent exhibitions including Taipei Biennale, Venice Biennale, Momentum Biennale, Helsinki biennale, Kalmar Art Museum, CCCB Barcelona, Chronus Art Center Shanghai, Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art Helsinki, ZKM Germany, ISCP New York.
Haapoja is the co-editor of Bud Book – Manual for Earthly Living (Ed. Gustafsson&Haapoja), Altern Ecologies – Emergent Perspectives on the Ecological Threshold in the 55. Venice Biennale (ed. Terike Haapoja, Taru Elfving), The Helsinki Effect – Public Alternatives to the Guggenheim Model of Culture-Driven Development (ed. Andrew Ross, Michael Sorkin and Terike Haapoja), and Field_Notes: From Landscape to Laboratory (ed. Erich Berger, Laura Beloff, Terike Haapoja). She was the editor of mustekala.info issue “After the Animal” (2013), co-editor of special issue “Animal” of Esitys -journal (2013).
Haapoja represented Finland in the 55. Venice Biennale in 2013 with a solo show in the Nordic Pavilion. Her work has been awarded with ANTI Festival International Prize for Live Art (2016), Dukaatti prize (2008), Säde prize (2009) and Finland’s Festival’s artist of the year honorary mention in 2007. Haapoja was nominated for Ars Fennica prize candidate in 2011. Gustafsson&Haapoja was awarded with Finnish State Media Art Award in 2016 and Kiila-Prize for socially engaged art in 2013.
Terike Haapoja is currently a member of the board of trustees of the Finnish Cultural Institute in New York. She was a founding member and a chair of board of Checkpoint Helsinki (a Helsinki based art organization now named PUBLICS that was originally established as an alternative to the Guggenheim Helsinki proposal), and a member of the board of trustees of Kone Foundation 2015-2018. She supports the BDS movement and has been involved with Gulf Labor Coalition while supporting campaigns by other art activism groups in NYC and abroad. She is an adjunct professor at Parsons Fine Arts and NYU, New York, and gives talks and lectures actively in the US and internationally.
