{"id":17627,"date":"2026-02-18T18:48:56","date_gmt":"2026-02-18T18:48:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/17627\/"},"modified":"2026-02-18T18:48:56","modified_gmt":"2026-02-18T18:48:56","slug":"a-slow-biennial-helsinkis-gentle-vision-for-environmental-art","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/17627\/","title":{"rendered":"A Slow Biennial: Helsinki\u2019s Gentle Vision for Environmental Art"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\"An<\/a>Gunzi Holmstr\u00f6m, From the Dark into the Great Blue Yonder, 2025. Photo: HAM \/ Helsinki Biennial \/ Sonja Hyyti\u00e4inen<\/p>\n

We often think of the Nordic countries as exemplars of sustainability in both lifestyle and cultural practices. Finland, in this sense, doesn\u2019t disappoint. It instills this ecological consciousness long before the visitor even sets foot on Vallisaari Island, one of the three locations of the third edition of the Helsinki Biennial, which is currently unfolding.<\/p>\n

The art encounter in Helsinki begins in the most unexpected of places: the airport restrooms. There, artificial birdsong\u2014subtle and, of course, synthetic\u2014trickles through the speakers, momentarily suspending the sterile context and suggesting a slice of forest instead. Then there\u2019s the escalator that connects the airport to the train station. What could be another non-place is softened by moving projections of dancers from the Finnish National Ballet against a monumental, museum-like wall of concrete. Art and environment begin to merge subtly and pervasively even before you\u2019ve entered the city proper.<\/p>\n

Because that\u2019s the thing; in Helsinki, it becomes impossible to distinguish where art ends and ecology begins. This blurring is not just a feature of the Biennial but is evident throughout the city center, almost entirely built in Jugendstil architecture, where nature\u2019s curves are translated into doorways and windows carved into pervasive granite. In the Temppeliaukio Church, Brutalist cement walls are anchored into rock, and dry-stone walls and a halo of minimalist glass hold up a great copper dome.<\/p>\n

SEE ALSO: Observer\u2019s Guide to Helsinki\u2019s Best Art Galleries and Museums<\/a><\/p>\n

It goes without saying that the Helsinki Biennial blurs boundaries between nature and nurture, inside and outside, installation and environment. Titled \u201cShelter: Below and Beyond, Becoming and Belonging,\u201d the third edition positions itself as a quiet manifesto for ecological exhibition-making. At the same time, it remains acutely aware of themes that now feel unavoidable in any major art showcase: spirit of place meeting postcolonial discourses from elsewhere, trans-feminism (without spelling it out; almost all the artists are women) and environmentalism.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs curators, we sought to step away from human-centred thinking, instead engaging with more-than-human memories, intelligences and sensibilities,\u201d Kati Kivinen<\/a>, who co-curated the Biennial alongside Blanca de la Torre<\/a>, told Observer. Moving away from anthropocentrism is another prevailing theme of today\u2019s biennials, as seen in Nicolas Bourriaud<\/a>\u2019s Gwangju Biennial<\/a>, \u201cPansori,\u201d which bypassed the human, letting A.I. and nature communicate directly.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe point is that sustainability is not a subject. It is an attitude, a way to live in the world,\u201d continued Kivinen. \u201cIt is not only about carbon footprints and energy consumption. It\u2019s a way of rethinking all aspects of the exhibition\u2014from how we ship and produce the works to the materials we use and how we involve local communities and avoid extractivist practices. Sustainability must be part of the curatorial DNA, not an afterthought.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"An\"An<\/a>Theresa Traore Dahlberg, Signals Beyond, 2025 (detail). Photo: HAM \/ Helsinki Biennial \/ Sonja Hyyti\u00e4inen<\/p>\n

Just as vital was ecological production itself. From calculating carbon footprints to favoring local nontoxic materials to promoting traditional crafts, every curatorial decision considered environmental consequences. The team even created a sustainability decalogue with principles of climate optimism, because \u201cpessimistic visions and apocalyptic landscapes only lead to paralysis and inaction.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to Arja Miller<\/a>, director of Helsinki Art Museum and the Biennial, three things make the event unique: \u201cThe first is the very close and multifaceted, committed collaboration with the city of Helsinki. The second is the dimension of public art. We strive to enhance even further the connection with public art in the future. And third is the sea and the beautiful islands of Helsinki, an inseparable part of this city and its history.\u201d<\/p>\n

That dual refrain\u2014more-than-human listening and sustainability as ethos\u2014grounds the Biennial\u2019s unfolding across three distinct sites: the reclaimed wilderness of Vallisaari, the structured urbanity of Esplanade Park and the museum.<\/p>\n

HAM: The white cube<\/p>\n

Visitors are welcomed by a sculpted seagull head that playfully and surreally towers at the entrance of the Helsinki Art Museum. Inside, the surrealism continues with a giant transgenic-looking flower by Yayoi Kusama<\/a>, part of her Flowers that Bloom Tomorrow series.<\/p>\n

Nature on a grand scale continues with Ingela Ihrman<\/a>\u2019s Giant Hogweed, an enlarged representation of the perennial herb Heracleum mantegazzianum, a plant introduced as ornamental and now an invasive species. To the non-botanist, the first impression is that of a blown dandelion expressing a wish\u2014perhaps a representation of human willpower pushing against nature.<\/p>\n

The curatorial selection process, according to de la Torre, was deliberate and collaborative: \u201cWe compiled names of artists that we found compelling. I was the one suggesting more names from the global south, while Kati provided invaluable insights from the Nordic art scene.\u201d They sought artists working with repair and storytelling\u2014those who could weave scientific knowledge with Indigenous cosmologies and folklore.<\/p>\n

\"n\"n<\/a>Ingela Ihrman, The Giant Hogweed, 2020. Photo: HAM \/ Helsinki Biennial \/ Sonja Hyyti\u00e4inen<\/p>\n

One example is Aluaiy Kaumakan<\/a>, an artist from the Pangcah (Amis) Indigenous community in Taiwan, who presents a textile work hanging from the ceiling, using a traditional weaving practice that merges ancestral resilience with contemporary trauma recovery and refers in particular to Typhoon Morakot in 2009, which displaced the people from her village.<\/p>\n

Vallisaari Island: The wilds<\/p>\n

In true biennial fashion, a ferry is involved. Be it Venice or Istanbul, water is often the threshold. On a rainy Helsinki day, we head to Vallisaari Island, once a military zone and now home to bats, moss and ghost stories. Artworks here try\u2014sometimes successfully, sometimes not\u2014to embed themselves into the ecology.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe exhibition in Vallisaari provided a way to activate this idea of shelter\u2014not only for humans but through the eyes of other species,\u201d says Kivinen. \u201cThe artworks interact with the existing environment, which is very rich and lively. In a way, the island is a host\u2014not just for us humans but for all the species that live here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Geraldine Javier<\/a>\u2019s Witness, hosted within an abandoned building, is among the most evocative: columns of eco-printed fabric evoke tree rings, telling layered stories of time and trauma. \u201cIt\u2019s about evoking the tree rings, and how tree rings are affected by the changes in the environment,\u201d Javier tells Observer. \u201cEach of the columns represents a different narrative. For example, one is about the history of Vallisaari. The inside is about the war and explosions, and then it became bereft of people, and when this was abandoned, nature was able to proliferate.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ana Teresa Barboza<\/a>\u2019s Salt Bark spans continents, using both birch bark from Finland and Yanchama bark from the Peruvian Amazon to create a tentacular installation that threads through the damp rooms of another abandoned outpost. \u201cThe first part you see when you enter is bark from Finland. The other part is made with Yanchama bark from the Peruvian Amazon,\u201d she says. \u201cWe traveled to Puerto Maldonado, a place in the Amazon, and we saw with the artisan how they extract the Yanchama bark, and the drawings you can see on the bark represent this process.\u201d Her concept was to create parallel histories connecting the North and the South.<\/p>\n

Katie Holten<\/a>\u2019s Learning to Be Better Lovers (Forest School) offers a playful revolution in language, evoking schoolrooms, summer programs and scout camps. She invented a tree alphabet, inviting visitors to spell words by substituting each letter with the silhouette of a plant. \u201cWhat if we wrote using trees? What would we say, and who could read it?\u201d she asks. \u201cLearning to Be Better Lovers is something that I\u2019ve been doing for the last few years about the fact that our species needs to learn how to care for each other, but also for this planet. We\u2019ve forgotten how to love in ways that include other species.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"An\"An<\/a>LOCUS (Tanja Thorjussen and Thale Blix Fastfold), Zostera Marina\u2019s song of increase, 2025 (detail). Photo: HAM \/ Helsinki Biennial \/ Maija Toivanen<\/p>\n

However, the path across the island that should lead visitors to each work like a via crucis reveals that not all the pieces feel in dialogue with their setting. Some, conceived outside the logic of land art, appear parachuted in. Others, more ineffable, like artificial smells, go almost unnoticed. The five-kilometer walk\u2014however poetic\u2014doesn\u2019t always foster a mindset conducive to art contemplation. If humans use wilderness to escape culture, why add artworks to nature\u2014particularly in a forest, already so full of competing elements, than in a desert or meadow?<\/p>\n

Esplanade Park: The sweet spot<\/p>\n

Historically, compromise between nature and culture is found in gardens, and a garden-like dimension appears in this Biennial at Esplanade Park, its new site. Here, the curated meets the civic.<\/p>\n

Amid linden trees and weekend picnickers, the artworks intervene softly, like Hamm and Dzamil Kamanger<\/a>\u2019s Bug Rugs, four insect-hotel sculptures whose decorative patterns draw on a Finnish rya wool tapestry and a Kurdish kilim rug. Nearby, Gediminas Urbonas<\/a>\u2019s Unmelting Black (Snowman 1:1)\u2014a sculpture in Karelian black granite\u2014echoes Japanese stone art.<\/p>\n

\u201cEsplanade\u2019s challenge was to use the constructed beauty of the surroundings to think about what artworks might fit there,\u201d Kivinen explains. The park\u2019s \u201cnature as a source of inspiration\u201d led to works like Park Hotels for pollinators\u2014tiny architectural shelters installed in flower beds, reminding visitors that urban biodiversity is fragile, purposeful and in need of care.<\/p>\n

In a recent interview with Frieze, de la Torre spoke of the importance of developing sustainable methodologies in order to ensure the fruition of a slow biennial: \u201cBeyond managing the biennial\u2019s carbon footprint, we are considering other footprints, like emotional footprints, and thinking about sustainability in a holistic way.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Biennial delivers on this front in the sense that it unfolds in the moment, strives for harmony and doesn\u2019t elicit particularly strong emotions. Which raises yet another question: Do we want art to affect us so imperceptibly that it\u2019s like nothing ever happened? Should we be reducing our emotional footprint alongside the environmental? Wouldn\u2019t we rather be consumed, transformed, destroyed and rebuilt by art, as by a great love?<\/p>\n

The third edition of the Helsinki Biennial<\/a> is open through September 21, 2025, on Vallisaari Island, in Esplanade Park and at Helsinki Art Museum.<\/p>\n

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