We regularly consider the Nordic international locations as exemplars of sustainability in each life-style and cultural practices. Finland, on this sense, doesn’t disappoint. It instills this ecological consciousness lengthy earlier than the customer even units foot on Vallisaari Island, one of many three places of the third version of the Helsinki Biennial, which is at the moment unfolding.
The artwork encounter in Helsinki begins in probably the most surprising of locations: the airport restrooms. There, synthetic birdsong—refined and, after all, artificial—trickles by the audio system, momentarily suspending the sterile context and suggesting a slice of forest as a substitute. Then there’s the escalator that connects the airport to the prepare station. What may very well be one other non-place is softened by transferring projections of dancers from the Finnish Nationwide Ballet in opposition to a monumental, museum-like wall of concrete. Artwork and atmosphere start to merge subtly and pervasively even earlier than you’ve entered town correct.
As a result of that’s the factor; in Helsinki, it turns into inconceivable to tell apart the place artwork ends and ecology begins. This blurring isn’t just a function of the Biennial however is clear all through town heart, virtually fully in-built Jugendstil structure, the place nature’s curves are translated into doorways and home windows carved into pervasive granite. Within the Temppeliaukio Church, Brutalist cement partitions are anchored into rock, and dry-stone partitions and a halo of minimalist glass maintain up an incredible copper dome.
SEE ALSO: Observer’s Information to Helsinki’s Greatest Artwork Galleries and Museums
It goes with out saying that the Helsinki Biennial blurs boundaries between nature and nurture, inside and outdoors, set up and atmosphere. Titled “Shelter: Beneath and Past, Changing into and Belonging,” the third version positions itself as a quiet manifesto for ecological exhibition-making. On the identical time, it stays conscious about themes that now really feel unavoidable in any main artwork showcase: spirit of place assembly postcolonial discourses from elsewhere, trans-feminism (with out spelling it out; virtually all of the artists are girls) and environmentalism.
“As curators, we sought to step away from human-centred considering, as a substitute participating with more-than-human recollections, intelligences and sensibilities,” Kati Kivinen, who co-curated the Biennial alongside Blanca de la Torre, instructed Observer. Shifting away from anthropocentrism is one other prevailing theme of as we speak’s biennials, as seen in Nicolas Bourriaud’s Gwangju Biennial, “Pansori,” which bypassed the human, letting A.I. and nature talk immediately.
“The purpose is that sustainability just isn’t a topic. It’s an angle, a solution to stay on the earth,” continued Kivinen. “It isn’t solely about carbon footprints and vitality consumption. It’s a means of rethinking all elements of the exhibition—from how we ship and produce the works to the supplies we use and the way we contain native communities and keep away from extractivist practices. Sustainability have to be a part of the curatorial DNA, not an afterthought.”
Simply as important was ecological manufacturing itself. From calculating carbon footprints to favoring native unhazardous supplies to selling conventional crafts, each curatorial determination thought of environmental penalties. The workforce even created a sustainability decalogue with ideas of local weather optimism, as a result of “pessimistic visions and apocalyptic landscapes solely result in paralysis and inaction.”
Based on Arja Miller, director of Helsinki Artwork Museum and the Biennial, three issues make the occasion distinctive: “The primary is the very shut and multifaceted, dedicated collaboration with town of Helsinki. The second is the dimension of public artwork. We attempt to boost even additional the reference to public artwork sooner or later. And third is the ocean and the attractive islands of Helsinki, an inseparable a part of this metropolis and its historical past.”
That twin chorus—more-than-human listening and sustainability as ethos—grounds the Biennial’s unfolding throughout three distinct websites: the reclaimed wilderness of Vallisaari, the structured urbanity of Esplanade Park and the museum.
HAM: The white dice
Guests are welcomed by a sculpted seagull head that playfully and surreally towers on the entrance of the Helsinki Artwork Museum. Inside, the surrealism continues with a large transgenic-looking flower by Yayoi Kusama, a part of her Flowers that Bloom Tomorrow sequence.
Nature on a grand scale continues with Ingela Ihrman’s Large Hogweed, an enlarged illustration of the perennial herb Heracleum mantegazzianum, a plant launched as decorative and now an invasive species. To the non-botanist, the primary impression is that of a blown dandelion expressing a want—maybe a illustration of human willpower pushing in opposition to nature.
The curatorial choice course of, in response to de la Torre, was deliberate and collaborative: “We compiled names of artists that we discovered compelling. I used to be the one suggesting extra names from the worldwide south, whereas Kati offered invaluable insights from the Nordic artwork scene.” They sought artists working with restore and storytelling—those that might weave scientific data with Indigenous cosmologies and folklore.
One instance is Aluaiy Kaumakan, an artist from the Pangcah (Amis) Indigenous group in Taiwan, who presents a textile work hanging from the ceiling, utilizing a conventional weaving follow that merges ancestral resilience with modern trauma restoration and refers particularly to Hurricane Morakot in 2009, which displaced the folks from her village.
Vallisaari Island: The wilds
In true biennial style, a ferry is concerned. Be it Venice or Istanbul, water is usually the edge. On a wet Helsinki day, we head to Vallisaari Island, as soon as a navy zone and now house to bats, moss and ghost tales. Artworks right here strive—generally efficiently, generally not—to embed themselves into the ecology.
“The exhibition in Vallisaari offered a solution to activate this concept of shelter—not just for people however by the eyes of different species,” says Kivinen. “The artworks work together with the prevailing atmosphere, which could be very wealthy and full of life. In a means, the island is a bunch—not only for us people however for all of the species that stay right here.”
Geraldine Javier’s Witness, hosted inside an deserted constructing, is among the many most evocative: columns of eco-printed material evoke tree rings, telling layered tales of time and trauma. “It’s about evoking the tree rings, and the way tree rings are affected by the adjustments within the atmosphere,” Javier tells Observer. “Every of the columns represents a unique narrative. For instance, one is concerning the historical past of Vallisaari. The within is concerning the conflict and explosions, after which it grew to become bereft of individuals, and when this was deserted, nature was capable of proliferate.”
Ana Teresa Barboza’s Salt Bark spans continents, utilizing each birch bark from Finland and Yanchama bark from the Peruvian Amazon to create a tentacular set up that threads by the damp rooms of one other deserted outpost. “The primary half you see while you enter is bark from Finland. The opposite half is made with Yanchama bark from the Peruvian Amazon,” she says. “We traveled to Puerto Maldonado, a spot within the Amazon, and we noticed with the artisan how they extract the Yanchama bark, and the drawings you may see on the bark characterize this course of.” Her idea was to create parallel histories connecting the North and the South.
Katie Holten’s Studying to Be Higher Lovers (Forest College) affords a playful revolution in language, evoking schoolrooms, summer season applications and scout camps. She invented a tree alphabet, inviting guests to spell phrases by substituting every letter with the silhouette of a plant. “What if we wrote utilizing bushes? What would we are saying, and who might learn it?” she asks. “Studying to Be Higher Lovers is one thing that I’ve been doing for the previous couple of years about the truth that our species must learn to look after one another, but in addition for this planet. We’ve forgotten how you can love in ways in which embrace different species.”
Nonetheless, the trail throughout the island that ought to lead guests to every work like a through crucis reveals that not all of the items really feel in dialogue with their setting. Some, conceived exterior the logic of land artwork, seem parachuted in. Others, extra ineffable, like synthetic smells, go virtually unnoticed. The five-kilometer stroll—nevertheless poetic—doesn’t all the time foster a mindset conducive to artwork contemplation. If people use wilderness to flee tradition, why add artworks to nature—significantly in a forest, already so filled with competing parts, than in a desert or meadow?
Esplanade Park: The candy spot
Traditionally, compromise between nature and tradition is present in gardens, and a garden-like dimension seems on this Biennial at Esplanade Park, its new website. Right here, the curated meets the civic.
Amid linden bushes and weekend picnickers, the artworks intervene softly, like Hamm and Dzamil Kamanger’s Bug Rugs, 4 insect-hotel sculptures whose ornamental patterns draw on a Finnish rya wool tapestry and a Kurdish kilim rug. Close by, Gediminas Urbonas’s Unmelting Black (Snowman 1:1)—a sculpture in Karelian black granite—echoes Japanese stone artwork.
“Esplanade’s problem was to make use of the constructed fantastic thing about the environment to consider what artworks would possibly match there,” Kivinen explains. The park’s “nature as a supply of inspiration” led to works like Park Resorts for pollinators—tiny architectural shelters put in in flower beds, reminding guests that city biodiversity is fragile, purposeful and in want of care.
In a current interview with Frieze, de la Torre spoke of the significance of growing sustainable methodologies with the intention to make sure the fruition of a sluggish biennial: “Past managing the biennial’s carbon footprint, we’re contemplating different footprints, like emotional footprints, and excited about sustainability in a holistic means.”
The Biennial delivers on this entrance within the sense that it unfolds within the second, strives for concord and doesn’t elicit significantly robust feelings. Which raises one more query: Do we wish artwork to have an effect on us so imperceptibly that it’s like nothing ever occurred? Ought to we be decreasing our emotional footprint alongside the environmental? Wouldn’t we moderately be consumed, reworked, destroyed and rebuilt by artwork, as by an incredible love?
The third version of the Helsinki Biennial is open by September 21, 2025, on Vallisaari Island, in Esplanade Park and at Helsinki Artwork Museum.
