Ulterior Gallery is thrilled to announce Cartographic affinities, a group exhibition featuring three artists from Finland: Noora Schroderus, Päivi Takala, and Elina Vainio. The exhibition opens with a reception on January 16, 2026, from 6 to 8 pm.

Together, Schroderus, Takala, and Vainio explore the shifting space between humans, animals, and the natural world. Noora Schroderus embroiders the names of dogs with their own hair, drawing a wry and poignant analogy that questions how humans understand their relationships with other nonhuman beings. Using actual dog fur, her embroidery works become intimate portraits of companionship and co-existence. The names given to animals—wether fantastical (Mörkö), spiritual (Koitto), or human (Robbie)—reveal how language binds humans to their companions in deeply personal and emotionally charged ways, often reflecting who we are or who we aspire to be.

In contrast with this intensely bound connection, Päivi Takala’s paintings adopt a quieter, more contemplative approach to human-animal connections. She depicts female figures wearing scarves with eyes that look out at us, disguising the creatures hidden beneath, and blurring the boundary between humans and the non-humans. Takala’s work reflects on the strange coexistence of these beings and the characteristics and emotions humans often project onto animals. Takala’s recurring motifs, such as depictions of horses and birds, meditate on the nature of that intimacy between species, but also on the unbridgeable expanse that separates them.

Elina Vainio’s delicate beeswax reliefs bring forward the tension and fragility inherent in these connections. Using beeswax—a material produced through the collective labor of honeybees—Vainio embeds artificial and handmade objects within its surface, creating tenuous visual and material relationships. In Earthquake (Yamamura koka), the inlaid black-and-white image is a reproduction of Yamamura Koka’s sketch of the destruction caused by the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake. While beeswax appears visually frail, it is materially resilient, prompting viewers to reconsider what they know about the space nature occupies around and within us. The boundaries between culture and nature, as well as humanity’s assumptions about permanence, are quietly questioned.

Rather than offering a fixed understanding of these relationships, the works of Schroderus, Takala, and Vainio reveal an unstable terrain. Cartographic affinities maps out that realm, revealing the inconsistencies, uncertainties, and vulnerabilities of humankind’s coexistence in nature’s ecosystems.

This exhibition is co-organized with The Finnish Cultural Institute in New York and the Consulate General of Finland in New York through their partnership with the New Art Dealers Alliance. This collaboration, which is made possible with the support of a grant by Jane and Aatos Erkko Foundation, Finlandia Foundation National, and The Ministry of Education and Culture in Finland, underscores a shared commitment to fostering international dialogue between the contemporary art scenes of Finland and New York.