Artist Pilvi Takala has been selected to represent Finland at the Fifty-Ninth Venice Biennale, which will take place from May to November in 2021. Commissioned and produced by Frame Contemporary Art Finland, the pavilion will be curated by Christina Li.

Based in Berlin and Helsinki, Takala is known for her video works, which are often based on performative interventions, such as The Stroker, 2018, for which she posed as a wellness consultant at a trendy East London coworking space for young entrepreneurs and startups. Takala’s work has been exhibited at MoMA PS1, New York; the Palais de Tokyo, Paris; the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, Finland; and Kunsthalle Basel, Switzerland.

“I am thrilled to be making a new work for the Pavilion of Finland in Venice,” Takala said in a statement. “My practice is slow, requiring a long research process, so I am especially grateful to Frame for approaching me for a proposal well in advance. The fact that I could start researching early on means I don’t have to make any compromises due to lack of time and can be more ambitious about what I’m making.”

Li works as a curator and writer in Hong Kong and Amsterdam. Previously, she served as director and curator-at-large at Hong Kong’s nonprofit space Spring Workshop, from 2015 to 2017. During her tenure, she curated “A Collective Present” (2017), “Wu Tsang: Duilian” (2016), and “Wong Wai Yin: Without Trying” (2016). Li also helmed “Shirley Tse: Stakeholders,” Hong Kong’s collateral event at the Venice Biennale’s fifty-eighth edition, and is currently collaborating with Kasper Koenig and Hamza Walker on a special project marking the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of Art Basel.