Frame Visual Art Finland is an advocate for Finnish contemporary art.

Frame supports international initiatives, facilitates professional partnerships, and encourages critical development of the field through grants, visitor programme and residencies, seminars and talks, exhibition collaborations and network platforms. Frame is in charge of the Finnish participation in the Venice Biennale alongside other major international art events.

Frame's Role:

• award grants


• organise visits to Finland for art professionals


• find opportunities for Finnish artists and professionals to participate in major art events


• assist artists and art professionals in networking and finding collaborators


• arrange seminars, discussions and residency opportunities


• provide information about Finnish arts

Services
The purpose of Frame is to provide support for Finnish visual art to become more international, strengthening the influence of Finnish art abroad. We promote the international mobility of Finnish artists, which in turn increases the artists’ opportunities to work both in Finland and elsewhere in the world.

Visual art travels via many different routes and is presented on many different levels. Behind art export, there are state actors and well-known and established art institutions as well as small, new or even completely unknown art organisations. The artists themselves and their own contact networks are central to the international visibility of Finnish art. It is important for Frame to co-operate with all of these parties.

Frame supports artists and experts in becoming more international and their interaction with the rest of the world by awarding grants, organising visits by experts, realising international projects and by providing information in the field of visual art.

Grants

Frame distributes funds from the Ministry of Culture and Education to promote Finnish contemporary arts internationally.

Frame awards grants for Finnish artists and artists working in Finland for an exhibition or a participation at an art fair abroad, a publication in other language than Finnish and an expert visit abroad. Grants are distributed from the annual state subsidies that Frame receives from the Ministry of Education and Culture.

The grants are awarded for establishing new relations and fortifying the existent ones. A grant often serves an artist as a stepping stone for a career abroad. It is a powerful tool for realising a project outside home country.

Grant decisions are made by an appointed grants commission and they are based on peer review. The commission consists of four people: Director of Frame Visual Art Finland Raija Koli, Curator Mikko Oranen and Chief Curator Anna-Kaisa Rastenberger. The final decisions, based on the commission’s proposition, are conducted by the Board of Directors of the Frame Foundation.