The Kuutar Garden

About the exhibition

The Kuutar Garden transforms Oulu’s Botanical Garden, its seed vault, and endangered plant narratives into a living virtual ecosystem.

Beneath the city, in the underground Kivisydän car park, the installation unfolds as a spatial environment shaped by more than four years of ecological fieldwork in Northern Finland. Since 2023, Kudsk Steensen has worked in Oulu and its surroundings, where the Botanical Garden and the region’s distinctive northern light — especially moonlight — have become key influences.

The work draws on plant collections, seed archives and conservation research, including the endangered aquatic plant Hippuris tetraphylla. It also incorporates a virtual reconstruction of Oulu’s Botanical Garden pyramids, where fragments of decades of botanical knowledge are reassembled for visitors to explore.

Visitors enter an immersive world inspired by one of the world’s northernmost botanical gardens. Musical elements of the simulation are created in collaboration with Danny Harle and Lugh O’Neill. The underground space becomes a spectral garden where light, sound and movement guide the visitor through shifting plant-based environments.

Kuutar

Kuutar refers to a figure from Karelian-Finnish and Baltic-Finnish folklore, known through the Kalevala and Kanteletar. Associated with the moon, nature and cycles of life, she is sometimes described as a weaver of golden threads.

In The Kuutar Garden, this figure becomes an architect of memory — part seed archive, part ecological system, part speculative future. Here, plants act as messengers between past and future, science and mythology, forming a continuously evolving virtual ecosystem.

Jakob Kudsk Steensen

Jakob Kudsk Steensen (b. 1987, Denmark) explores ecological and psychological themes. Working with technologies such as game engines, generative systems and photogrammetry, he challenges perspectives on technology, nature and human interaction. His practice is often described as worldbuilding, creating immersive environments for audiences and collaborators to inhabit.

His latest commissions include The Song Trapper at Fondation Louis Vuitton, Boreal Dreams at Fondation Beyeler, and Psychosphere at Cisternerne (2025). He previously exhibited The Ephemeral Lake at Tokyo’s Mori Museum (2025) following its premiere at Hamburg’s Hamburger Kunsthalle (2024), and participated in the 2024 Gwangju Biennale with Berl-Berl. Other notable solo exhibitions include Berl-Berl (LAS, Halle am Berghain, 2021) and Catharsis (Serpentine Galleries, London, 2020).

Team

Andrea Familari (IT) — Technical Producer

New media artist working with generative processes across theatre, music, performance and contemporary art. His practice explores noise, systems and emergent structures across different media.

Liz Kircher (USA) — Co-Producer

Long-term collaborator of Steensen, with expertise in ecology, sustainability and material systems, focusing on human–environment relationships.

Alexander Boyes (AUS) — Project Producer / Studio Management

Multidisciplinary producer working with artist- and research-led teams. Has collaborated with institutions ranging from the Francis Crick Institute to Serpentine Arts Technologies.

Wouter Weynants (BE) — Lead Technical Developer

Works closely with Steensen on large-scale XR projects, including Berl-Berl, Liminal Lands and Primal Tourism.

Lugh O’Neill (IE) — Sound Artist

Sound and spatial designer working with spatialisation as a compositional tool, treating space as an active dimension of sound.

The Kuutar Garden is a production of Oulu2026 European Capital of Culture, programmed by Claudia Woolgar (NL).