Screening of Thawing of the Frozen Rivers, by Kristiina Koskentola with Han Xiaohan
We start with a conversation between the artist and curator and writer Anders Kreuger, Director of Kunsthalle Kohta in Helsinki. Kristiina will speak about her collaboration with Manchu shamanic composer Han Xiaohan.
Refreshments and snacks will be offered after the screening.
About the work
While the original installation, first shown in 2025, includes 3 channel moving image with sound, ritualistic performances, small statues of animal gods, Manchu, Mongol, Kazakh and Karelian carpets, the work has been exceptionally adapted for a dialogic screening at Villa Eläintarha.
Its title, ‘Thawing of the Frozen Rivers’, transcends the literal reference to melting ice and extends the notion of ‘thawing’ to the process of warming rigid and isolating systems such as distinctions between species, nations or cultures based on binary oppositions. Both the work and the title articulate the process of reconnecting, of opening ourselves to new relationships: between ourselves as humans but also to non-human entities and spiritual worlds. Like Kristiina Koskentola’s larger practice, ‘Thawing of the Frozen Rivers’ seeks to foster a deeper, more empathetic interconnectedness emphasizing the limits (and failures) of human-centred knowledge and agency.
The rivers, alongside with the Taiga forests and the vibration of the shaman drums as natural pathways, serve as speculative metaphors for connection and flow, for multispecies coexistence and planetary healing.
About the artist
Kristiina Koskentola, PhD, is a Finnish transdisciplinary artist with Karelian heritage, currently dividing her time between Amsterdam, Helsinki and Northern China, where she has been spending her winters for over a decade, living and working with various communities. This has had a profound impact on her work, thinking and being in and of the world. Her interdisciplinary, multisensory and collaborative practice, spanning moving image, sound, publications, musical performances and convivial cooking events, engages with ecological philosophy, shamanic knowledge systems and posthuman discourse. The work often combines field research with collaborative and polyvocal methodologies. Koskentola’s work has been featured in many exhibitions in the international context, among them the 3rd Helsinki Biennial in 2025. Her book ‘Enfleshed’ was published by Onomatopee in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, in 2023.
About the curator
Anders Kreuger is a Swedish-born curator and writer who has been directing Kohta, an artist-initiated kunsthalle for Helsinki, since 2019. Before that he was, among other things, Senior Curator at M HKA, the Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp, member of te editorial team of the London-based art journal ‘Afterall’, Director of the Malmö Art Academy in Sweden and Founding Director of NIFCA, the Nordic Institute for Contemporary Art, in Helsinki.
Image caption
film still Han Xiaohan Ritualisitc performance by the Amur River (2024) © the artists