We are excited to collaborate with Frame Contemporary Art Finland to bring leading international curators from the Benelux region, Sandrine Colard, Curator-at-Large at KANAL-Centre Pompidou in Brussels and Gabi Ngcobo, Director at Kunstinstituut Melly in Rotterdam to the Helsinki Biennial preview programme 6-8 June.
Their visit is supported by the Finnish Cultural Institute for the Benelux and is part of Frame Contemporary Art Finland’s visitor programme at the Helsinki Biennial, organised in partnership with HAM Helsinki Art Museum.
Sandrine Colard
Curator, KANAL–Centre Pompidou in Brussels
Sandrine Colard is Associate Professor of Art History at Rutgers-Newark University in the United States, and curator-at-large at the Kanal-Pompidou Museum in Brussels. She holds a doctorate from Columbia University (2016), and she is a historian of African, modern and contemporary arts, as well as a historian of photography. Her research has been published internationally and supported by grants from the Musée du Quai Branly, the Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art, the Ford Foundation and by the Getty/ACLS. Among other exhibitions, Sandrine Colard curated the 6th Biennale of Lubumbashi, Future Genealogies: Tales from the Equatorial Line in 2019.
Gabi Ngcobo
Director of Kunstinstituut Melly, Rotterdam, Netherlands
Gabi Ngcobo is the Director of Kunstinstituut Melly, Rotterdam, NL. Between 2020 and 2023 she was Curatorial Director at the Javett Art Centre at the University of Pretoria, where she organised the group exhibitions Handle with Care (2021) and SCENORAMA (2022). Gabi initiated collective learning spaces in dialogue with works from loaned collections and brought to South Africa Frequencies, a project by Oscar Murillo. She worked on new commissions with artists Nolan Oswald Dennis and Luana Vitra. In 2022 Gabi curated The Show is Over at the South London Gallery and co-curated (with Murillo) The ‘t’ is Silent at the Museum Dhondt-Dhaenes in Deurle, Belgium. She has worked on independent curatorial projects, collaborated with various institutions in different parts of the world and for eight years lectured in the art department of the Wits School of Arts in Johannesburg. In 2018 she curated the 10th Berlin Biennale and was one of the co-curators of the 32nd Sao Paulo Bienal. She is a founding member of the Johannesburg based collaborative platforms NGO – Nothing Gets Organised (2016-) and the Center for Historical Reenactments (2010–14).
Gabi was part of the Founding Commission that selected Ruangrupa, to curate documenta 15 in 2022. She has sat on numerous jury and nomination committees, including Future Generations Art Prize 2021, Artes Mundi 2023 and Arnaldo Pomodoro Sculpture Prize 2025-2026.
Her writings have been published in various publications including Shooting Down Babylon: The Tracey Rose Retrospective at Zeitz MoCCA, Cape Town, (2022), Uneven Bodies, Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, Aotearoa New Zealand (2021), The Stronger We Become the catalogue of the South African Pavilion, Venice (2019), We Are Many: Art, the Political and Multiple Truths and Texte Zur Kunst September 2017.
Leading international curators join the preview programme
Other international guests include: Emma Enderby, Director, KW – Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin; Josephine Fity, freelance curator, Copenhagen; Aliyah Hasinah, Founder of the Black Curatorial Network, London; Pauline Koffi Vandet from curatorial duo Koffi & Højgaard, Copenhagen; Cliff Lauson, Director of Exhibitions at Somerset House, London; Christina Lehnert, Senior Curator at Kunsthalle Baden-Baden and Curator of GIBCA – Göteborg International Biennial for Contemporary Art 2025; Sarah Lookofsky, Director of Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo; Deborah Smith, Curator and former Director of the Arts Council Collection, London; and Pia Zeitzen and Sasha Shevchenko, Curatorial duo, Kollektiv Collective, London. Read more about the guests on Frame’s website. Additionally, numerous international professionals are attending the preview week hosted by the Helsinki Biennial, other initiatives, and independently.
Inside the preview week: collaboration and discovery
“We are happy to welcome this wonderful group to Helsinki and offer them an inspiring overview of the local artistic scene. Besides the exciting Helsinki Biennial Preview, there will be a diverse selection of studio visits, screenings, and exhibitions for them to explore. The interest towards Helsinki Biennial has been delightful, and we look forward to this week filled with cross-pollination of ideas and practices”, shares Frame’s Programme Coordinator Arvid van der Rijt.
The visitor programme at the preview week is organised in partnership with the Finnland-Institut in Berlin, the Finnish Institute in the UK and Ireland, the Finnish Cultural Institute for the Benelux, the Finnish-Norwegian Cultural Institute, the Finnish Cultural Institute in Denmark, and in collaboration with AV-arkki – the Centre for Finnish Media, Kohta, Bioart Society, Pitted Dates, and Galleria Huuto.
Annually, Frame hosts 20–30 international curators, researchers, and contemporary art professionals from museums and biennials as part of their International Visitor Programme to support international networking and future collaborations in Finnish contemporary art.
Helsinki Biennial 2025 brings together 37 artists and collectives on Vallisaari Island, in Esplanade Park, and at HAM Helsinki Art Museum. Titled Shelter: Below and Beyond, Becoming and Belonging, and curated by Kati Kivinen and Blanca de la Torre, this year’s edition runs from 8 June to 21 September 2025.
The Helsinki Biennial preview programme is available for accredited guests. Please see more information on the Helsinki Biennial website or contact Helsinki Biennial at preview@hamhelsinki.fi.
Images credits:
Sandrine Colard. Photo by Julien De Bock.
Gabi Ngcobo. Photo from Kunstinstituut Melly website.
The above text has been adapted from the article International curators visiting the Helsinki Biennial Preview originally published on Frame Contemporary Art Finland’s website on 20.5.2025.