Jenna Sutela is a 2025–2027 Jane Lombard Fellow, nominated by Suzanne Livingston for the Jane Lombard Prize for Art and Social Justice Prize as part of the Vera List Center for Art and Politics’ Matter of Intelligence Focus Theme.

Jenna Sutela’s image and sound works and “living sculptures” explore open systems from biology to computation and language. Based in Berlin, Sutela’s work has been presented internationally, including in the Finnish Pavilion at the 61st Venice Biennale (2026); Nicoletta Fiorucci Foundation, London (2026); Castello di Rivoli, Turin (2025); Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève (2024, 2023 & 2020); Swiss Institute, New York (2023); Helsinki Biennale (2023); Haus der Kunst, Munich (2022); Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki (2022 & 2017); Shanghai Biennial (2021); Liverpool Biennial (2021); Kunsthall Trondheim (2020); Serpentine Galleries, London (2019); and Moderna Museet, Stockholm (2019). She has been a visiting artist at La Becque, MIT, Somerset House Studios, and Callie’s Berlin, and is a Jane Lombard Fellow at The New School. Her publications include the exhibition catalogs Aeolian Suite (Mousse Publishing & PAN 2026) and NO NO NSE NSE (Koenig Books 2020), the LPs Pond Brain (PAN 2026) and nimiia vibié (PAN 2019), and the artist’s book Orgs (Garret Publications 2017). 

nimiia cétiï was inspired by experiments in interspecies communication and the aspiration to connect with a world beyond our consciousness. The project documents the interactions between a neural network, audio recordings of early Martian language, and footage of the movements of extremophilic bacteria. The work is about getting in touch with the nonhuman condition of the computers around us. As it’s about computers getting in touch with the more-than-human world around them. Another focus is the invisible organic lifeforms that govern our lives. Embodied cognition in both the human and the machine.

“[Sutela] taps into worlds with the care of a scientist but the vision of an artist, and with a powerful mission—to challenge the species hierarchy and invite us to experience kinship with species and realms far different from our own. […] In this sense, Sutela’s work explores social justice in the most holistic and planetary terms. It points towards an equality for all groups but just as importantly, all species and asks us to tune in, outside of ourselves, to find empathy with everything that makes our own life possible.”

—Suzanne Livingston, Jane Lombard Prize Council