The Kuutar Garden
September 18–November 30, 2026
An immersive installation The Kuutar Garden by Danish artist Jakob Kudsk Steensen reimagines the Kivisydän car park beneath Oulu city centre as a virtual world of botanical afterlife.
It transforms the Botanical Garden of the University of Oulu, 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 of the University of Oulu 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 L 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—an architect of memory
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 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).
The Kuutar Garden is a production of Oulu2026 European Capital of Culture, programmed by Claudia Woolgar (NL). The exhibition runs from 18 September to 30 November.
