Kati Kivinen (PhD) is an art historian and curator based in Helsinki. Currently she is the Head of exhibitions at the HAM Helsinki Art Museum (2022-) and Co-curator for the Helsinki Biennial 2025 with Curator Blanca de la Torre. Her recent and up-coming curatorial projects at HAM include Haegue Yang: Continuous Reenactments (2023, co-curated with S. Tuulikangas) and Nastja Säde Rönkkö: Survival Guide for a Post-Apocalyptic Child (up-coming 2024, co-curated with S. Metsola).
Previously she has been Chief Curator for Collections at the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma in Helsinki (2017-2022) and Curator for Temporary Exhibitions also at Kiasma (2003-2017). At Kiasma she curated the following exhibitions (a recent selection): Navigating North: Works from the Wihuri Foundation Collection (in collaboration with S. Hacklin & S. Oksanen), 2022; 50 Hz: Mika Vainio (in collaboration with Rikke Lundgreen), 2020; Dry Joy: Iiu Susiraja, 2019; Coexistence – Human, Animal and Nature in Kiasma’s Collections (in collaboration with S. Hacklin & S. Oksanen), 2019; There and Back Again – Contemporary art from the Baltic Sea region (in collaboration with S. Hacklin), 2018; Second Shift: Pilvi Takala, 2018; Conversation in Pieces: Jani Ruscica, 2016; Demonstrating Minds: Disagreements in Contemporary Art (in collaboration with P. Nyberg, M. Sakari & J-P. Vanhala), 2015; Tonight No Poetry Will Serve: Alfredo Jaar (in collaboration with P. Siitari), 2014; The Most Electrified Town in Finland: Mika Taanila (in collaboration with L. Haapala), 2013; Towards 2048: Erkki Kurenniemi, solo exhibition (in collaboration with L. Haapala & P. Rastas), 2013
Her doctoral thesis Stories Told Differently: The spatialization of narrative and encountering the story in moving image installations (University of Helsinki, 2013, in Finnish) researched the multi-screen video installations and their spatiality and reception in Finland in the 1990s and in the beginning of 2000s.
Her independent curatorial work includes numerous interdisciplinary exhibitions, most recently Fragile Times at Galerie im Körnerpark in Berlin (2020, with Dorothee Bienert) and Materiell Tanke at Varbergs Konsthall, Varberg, Sweden (2017). Since 2021 Kivinen is a board member of IKT – the International Association of Curators of Contemporary Art.