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Exhibition opening on: Thursday 19th of February 2026 at 15.00

CLOSER brings together ten student works developed during the six-week Personal Exploration course from Aalto University’s Contemporary Design Master’s program. Working under the shared theme of forest, the exhibition reflects an open-ended process of observation, material experimentation, and individual inquiry.

The project began with a five-day retreat in Koli, Eastern Finland, where the forest was approached as a place to think, inhabit and become with. In situ works were created from found materials and settings, cultivating an understanding of the dialogue between maker and material and highlighting the involvement and agency of the non-human. Back in the studios, these experiences were revisited, tested and translated into new material forms. Through ongoing conversations, tutoring and shared reflection, different ways of seeing, sensing and belonging were examined and slowly given shape.

The forest functions here not as subject matter alone, but as a condition: a space where orientation emerges through movement, attention, and encounter. Across installation, object, video, and material study, the works explore how meaning is formed through interaction between maker and material, body and environment, memory and present experience.

Encountered as a series of individual yet interconnected explorations, the exhibition unfolds without a prescribed path. Just as navigating a forest requires continual adjustment, the exhibition proposes design as an evolving relationship to place, to others, and to one’s own way of making sense of the world.

Taking part in the exhibition:

Yash Gupta
Seoyoung Lee
Erkki Lähde
Olli Majalahti
Coleman Piburn
Vilma Sainio
Maria Shilnikova
Yongsub Shin
Ildikó Varga
Serra Zileli

Teaching the course:

Maarit Mäkelä
Sara Hulkkonen