Art is increasingly expected to engage with ecological, social, and cultural transformations towards more sustainable ways of living. At the same time, artists are reflecting on their own role in the climate crisis, biodiversity loss, and wellbeing.
This blog post is based on the KUVATA project’s English-language webinar “From Caring to Provocation.” The webinar explored care as a central theme in building sustainability-oriented communities and societies. It also examined provocation and political art, but this text focuses on the former theme. Questions of provocation and politics will be addressed in a separate post.
The blog draws particularly on the presentations by Maria Huhmarniemi and Nina Rantala. Huhmarniemi is a professor at the Faculty of Art and Design in the University of Lapland, and Rantala is a visual artist who examines and reconfigures both artistic practices and our relationship with nature. This blog also includes updates on the project stages she presented in the webinar.
Sustainability and the Ecological Handprint of Art
Discussions of sustainability are often linked to ecology, carbon footprints, material choices and nature conservation. In the art field, this raises questions about how artworks can be produced with minimal environmental impact and which materials and production methods are used.
However, the focus of this webinar was not on minimising the carbon footprint of art, but rather on its ecological handprint: what positive impacts art can generate, initiate and strengthen.
Art as a Pathway to Sustainability
Maria Huhmarniemi opened the webinar by addressing sustainability research and the role of art in sustainability transformation. A sustainability transformation refers to a profound shift in prevailing values and attitudes. It manifests as a cultural change towards ways of living that remain within the planet’s carrying capacity and recognise the rights of animals and the more-than-human world. In this context, notions of justice expand to include the Land and multi-species communities.
Sustainability involves ecological concerns, as well as equality and human rights, anti-racism and anti-discrimination, and local cultures, community engagement, and participation. Ecological, social and cultural sustainability are often intertwined, yet they may also stand in tension with one another. For instance, the continuation of a traditional communal practice may be culturally sustainable (particularly if sustainability is understood as continuity), but problematic—or even unjust—in light of the climate crisis and biodiversity loss. There are therefore inherent tensions and contradictions between different dimensions of sustainability.
Huhmarniemi emphasised that artists need to be able to articulate the sustainability objectives and impacts of their projects. These relate to funding structures, artistic content, collaboration, and broader understandings of art’s societal role. At their best, art and art education can serve as a lever for sustainability transformation, as discussed by Huhmarniemi and Jokela in their Finnish-language article ”Art education as a leverage for sustainability.”
In Finland, a doctoral training pilot called SusTra is currently underway, focusing on sustainability transformation. The research conducted within it is interdisciplinary and solution-oriented, and includes arts-based research at the University of Lapland. As a result, the research base concerning the role of art and art education in sustainability transformation is steadily expanding.
Art for Sustainability Transformations
The significance of art in sustainability transformation lies in its ability to influence values, attitudes, behaviours and imaginaries of the future. Through art, people can experience forms of meaning in life that counterbalance identities shaped by consumerism. Art can also evoke experiences and discussions that strengthen ecological awareness, social responsibility and diverse modes of participation.
Art makes sustainability issues visible, tangible and emotionally resonant. It can reveal phenomena that are otherwise difficult to perceive and help foster hope and a sense of agency. Creating or experiencing art can challenge established ways of thinking and deepen one’s sense of connection to other people and the more-than-human world. The impact of art often emerges through shifts in how we understand the world around us and our place within it.
Participatory and Socially Engaged Art
Contemporary art increasingly builds on participation and community. Community art, participatory practices and socially engaged art create spaces for encounter, dialogue and collective action.
Huhmarniemi described her research and artistic practice exploring the potential of environmental art to engage in local environmental discussions. In practice, this has involved workshops, performances and community events in which participants actively contribute to art-making and the construction of meaning.
The impacts of art often become visible gradually and on multiple levels: public discourse may take on new nuances, participants may examine their own views from new perspectives, and new dialogues may emerge within communities.
Art can strengthen a sense of connection to ecosystems, increase empathy, and support hope in times when many experience climate anxiety or uncertainty about the future. Environmental art, multisensory approaches, embodied practices, and working in natural environments offer ways to rethink our ecological relations. Workshops held in forests, rituals, and art-based services that foster connection to nature can help people experience the value of nature in their own lives and well-being. For artists, facilitating such practices can also provide forms of livelihood.
Learning from and with the Land
Land-based learning refers to forms of learning that take place in relation to a specific place, the Land, and the surrounding ecosystem. It is grounded in experiential, embodied and shared interaction with a more-than-human environment. Such approaches emphasise local knowledge, observation of environmental processes, and a responsible human relationship with the Land and other living beings.
Land-based thinking is often connected to Indigenous pedagogies and sustainability perspectives that aim to strengthen relationships to place, community and the more-than-human world. In recent years, this pedagogical approach has also been applied in art and art education. The handbook Living with Land and People: A Handbook for Artistic Projects and Art-Based Action Research in the Arctic supports the design and implementation of art grounded in respectful and reciprocal relationships with the Land.
Soil Activism
Visual artist Nina Rantala works at the intersection of soil activism, environmental art and collaborative research. Together with visual artist Visa Suonpää, she leads the multidisciplinary project Apart We Shall Perish. The project examines human relationships to Land, soil and more-than-human life, and seeks to restore disrupted connections both with nature and between people.
A central premise is that soil is not a passive material but a living and active agent with a fundamental role in sustaining ecosystems and shaping societal transformations. The work highlights microbiological processes, including soil biodiversity, fermentation, and methods based on natural cycles. Enchantment also refers to working with soil in ways that enhance its living communities.
Rantala’s practice is grounded in dialogue with natural sciences, combining scientific knowledge with embodied and sensory experience. A key idea is that cities and nature should not be understood as separate systems, but as intertwined assemblages. In this way, urban spaces can also become sites of biodiversity and ecological regeneration.
One of Rantala’s ongoing projects is The Enchanted Forest, currently being developed in Turku in connection with a new psychiatric hospital. This micro-forest functions as part of the care environment and psychiatric treatment: a “15th sensory room” that supports well-being through multisensory, calming experiences. The design is based on the forest floor as a starting point. The Enchanted Forest is intended for diverse users: patients, staff, hospital school pupils, and other living beings in the area. The aim is to create a living, layered environment that integrates care, learning and biodiversity.
The project proposes new ways of understanding wellbeing as an ecological and material relationship with the surrounding world. Soil, plants and microbial life are seen as part of care and shared health. At the same time, it challenges conventional notions of art and its sites: the work is understood as an ongoing process in which land, humans, and more-than-human life interact.
Ultimately, Rantala’s work raises a broader question: how can art participate concretely in the sustainability transformation by actively shaping new ecological and social relations?
Selected Quotes from the Webinar
“Artists have a role to create thinking about our values, what kind of life we appreciate, and what do we want from our life.” – Huhmarniemi, 00:07:14
“Arts and culture can be understood as a catalyst for sustainability transformation. And artists may need to be able to talk about this themselves, to be able to justify why they need money for their activities and for their projects.” – Huhmarniemi, 00:10:22
“Hope is considered really, really important in sustainability actions and in enhancing agency. So we need to be able to believe that our decisions and our actions can contribute to society and that we are able to create something good through our lives and actions.” – Huhmarniemi, 00:16:57
“Artists need not only to lower their ecological footprint, but also to create an ecological handprint.” – Huhmarniemi, 00:18:00
“The strength of artists is to speak through the language of art and to influence values and value discussions.” – Huhmarniemi, 00:14:26
“We think that the nature and cities should be thought together. There is no such distinction. And it’s an opportunity to diversify soil microbiota and it can function as part of the microbial network in the urban environment.” – Rantala, 01:02:23
“The idea is to create a bridge between old-growth forests and urban environments by working with soil microbes. We use generative agricultural methods with fermentation.” – Rantala, 00:52:12
About the speakers of the webinar
Maria Huhmarniemi is a Vice Dean and Associate Professor at the Faculty of Arts and Design, University of Lapland. She is dedicated to art and research that enhances sustainability transformations through art. She has created socially and environmentally engaged art and pioneered arts-based methods to address local and political issues. In her talk, Huhmarniemi will shed light on the role of art and artists in initiating value change and levering sustainability – which is urgently needed.
Visual artist Nina Rantala is an soil activist and a leader of the multidisciplinary Apart We Shall Perish -team together with visual artist Visa Suonpää. Apart We Shall perish is a project about restoring connection to the land and with ourselves, learning subtle coexistence and understanding the importance of soil. Their practice is to create dialogues and find concrete ways to work together with the living, active entity, soil. In her presentation, she will open their artistic practice and their current project, the Enchanted Forest, a micro-forest, to the new psychiatric hospital in Turku.
The Webinar
KUVATA webinar 9: From Caring to Provocation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWxViA7kJWU&t=1242s
More information
Apart We Shall Perish www.apartweshallperish.org
Huhmarniemi, M. & Jokela, T. (2025). Kuvataidekasvatus kestävyyden vipuvoimana [Art education as a leverage point for sustainability]. Research in Arts and Education, 2025(1), 140–164. https://doi.org/10.54916/rae.145623
Huhmarniemi, M., & Jokela, T. (Eds.). (2025). Living with Land and people: A Handbook for artistic project and art-based action research in the Arctic. Lapin yliopisto. https://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-952-337-505-5
Nina Rantala: https://www.ninarantala.com/
Kuvata project
KUVATA: New Fields of Work and Income for Visual Artists is a project that supports the professional practice and livelihoods of Finnish visual artists by providing training, webinars, and practical tools for today’s art field. The target groups include professional visual artists and educational institutions across Finland. The KUVATA project (2024–2026) is coordinated by Tampere University of Applied Sciences in cooperation with the University of Lapland and Globe Art Point Association. The project is funded by the EU’s ESF+ programme via the Häme Centre for Economic Development, Transport and the Environment (ELY Centre).