Bio Nella Aarne is a Finnish curator living and working in the UK. She is Assistant Curator: Exhibitions and Public Programmes at Spike Island, convenes the Of Animacy Reading Group and co-directs Obsidian Coast, an independent curatorial platform committed to artist moving image and feminist, environmentally sustainable practices. Her work considers ethical encounters, collaborative learning and redefined notions of productivity. She is invested in critical thought that calls for heightened sensitivity to our own socio-political and material entanglements with boundless subject positions, histories, living beings, molecular compositions, technological apparatuses and infrastructures.

Nella has worked with and contributed to projects at Residency Unlimited, New York; UmArts, Umeå University; Kim? Contemporary Art Center, Riga; Somerset House, London; ICA, London; Abandon Normal Devices; Spike Island, Bristol; Arnolfini, Bristol; and Glasgow International. In 2021, she was an Associate Lecturer on the MA Curating programme at the University of the West of England. Nella earned her MFA in Curating from Goldsmiths (University of London) in 2015, and was the recipient of the Curatorial Junior Fellowship at Goldsmiths in 2015–16.