Turppi Group and Mervi Kytösalmi-Buhl are part of the exhibition Hidden on Tape. Early Video Art in Europe at the ZKM | Center for Art and Media, opening on November 28th and running until May 30, 2027.

The exhibition is a partial result of the five-year research project Emergence of Video Art in Europe (2021–25). The exhibition presents a selection of works from more than 26 European countries, with Europe understood as a geographical, cultural, and sociopolitical classification, providing an overview of developments in video art and its various forms in Europe from the end of the 1950s to the 1990s.

The exhibtion presents Turppi Group’s Earth Contacts (1982) (featured image), a performance about the relationship between a man and the nature, filmed in 1982 at an environmental art symposium in Lehtimäki, Finland.

Turppi Group (1982–83) was an artists’ collective formed by Marikki Hakola, Lea Kantonen, Pekka Kantonen, Martti Kukkonen, and Jarmo Vellonen.

The exhibition also features Mervi Kytosalmi-Buhl’s Spinning Top (1978), in which the revolving human body is paralleled with a spinning top.

Mervi Kytösalmi-Buhl is a pioneer of Finnish video art, whose work in the 1970s and 1980s can be considered as the beginning of Finnish video art. The artist has studied in the Düsseldorf Art Academy in Germany under the guidance of artists such as Nam June Paik. In her resent works, she has used photography, object collages and crocheting. Her works can be found in the collections of e.g. the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma in Helsinki.

Hidden on Tape. Early Video Art in Europe
November 28, 2026–May 30, 2027
The ZKM | Center for Art and Media
Karlsruhe, Germany

More information: ZKM | Center for Art and Media