SHAPE Helsinki Art Map

SHAPE Helsinki Art Map SHAPE map is a website resource for Helsinki’s contemporary art landscape. SHAPE highlights current public events, spaces, times and locations.

SHAPE Helsinki Art Map is a website resource for Helsinki’s contemporary art landscape, a mapping of art spaces and public events across the city. SHAPE is a useful tool for local residents and visitors to navigate the diversity of Helsinki art scenes and to find out what’s happening, where and when. Users and visitors can browse upcoming activities as well as find out more about their initiating

organisations. SHAPE is organized around eight main categorizes of activity: Events, Exhibitions, Festivals, Initiatives, Museums, Publications, Supports, and Workspaces.

Updated weekly, SHAPE introduces and highlights a variety of current public events and exhibitions throughout the city. ...
26/11/2025

Updated weekly, SHAPE introduces and highlights a variety of current public events and exhibitions throughout the city.

This week’s highlights include two events and two exhibitions:

📅 At the exhibition Der Küchenbau by Iiris Kaarlehto is a spatial proposition consisting of sculptural elements and assemblages, engaging with ideas of modern and postmodern interior architecture, personal and domestic spaces, as well as the processes, techniques, and fantasies associated with them. With found, collected, and modified objects, Kaarlehto approaches the memory and layers of meaning embedded in everyday materials and things.

📍 publishing event of Mouthing the Words: texts for performance 2019–2025 by Jaakko Pallasvuo takes place at on 2 December. Mouthing The Words consists of texts written to be performed. Sometimes this means a text written as the initial component to a theatrical production. Sometimes a text has been written to be spoken by someone without much other splendour. The words exist to be said, sung or put into action.

📅 On view at is dylan ray arnold’s exhibition ‘Ageing etc. feelings’, a spatially composed sculptural installation. Sculpted from everyday materials, the work relates to experiences of life, ageing, vitality and decay of both the body and material environments. The works draw from the affective memory of the 1990s domestic sphere, lingering in the body and culture. Reworked domestic textiles, objects, parts of furniture, and fragments of household appliances perform scenes of micro-drama that express both first-person experience and the layered life and relationships of the materials themselves.

📍.helsinki Minna Tarkka Lectures 2025: Collective Imagination in the Era of Optimisation, an annual get-together dedicated to discussing and debating the potential of art, media, and technology in reshaping current and future democratic societies, takes place at and across four days, 1–4 December. See programme and register at: m-cult.org/productions/minna-tarkka-lectures/2025

Updated weekly, SHAPE introduces and highlights a variety of current public events and exhibitions throughout the city.T...
20/11/2025

Updated weekly, SHAPE introduces and highlights a variety of current public events and exhibitions throughout the city.

This week’s highlights include two events and two exhibitions:
📍 Baltic Circle is an international festival for contemporary theatre and performance, held annually in November in Helsinki. The 22nd edition takes place from November 21st to December 6th, 2025. For more information visit balticcircle.fi.

📅 On view at gallery ‘Total Control’ by Inari Sandell is exhibition exploring instruments of power at the level of objects, societal structures, and information production. The video piece makes use of both surveillance and thermal imaging and is based on the artist’s personal experience of normative exercise of power in a museum space, asking whether all kinds of bodies have safe access to art.
📍 During UA Miniresidency Ruby Louise Rose focuses on her collaboration project with the Outokumpu-based Q***r performance and multidisciplinary art collective ONCE WE WERE ISLANDS. The Q***r science-fiction concept album and live listening event “Seven Songs of Yearning for a New World Sung by a Starship” imagines a starship hurtling through interstellar space carrying a cargo of Q***r refugees setting out on a one-way journey in search of a new home far from this world. The artist will give a short talk followed by live performance of the work-in-progress. Where: Nordic Culture Point (Suomenlinna B 28).

📅 At the exhibition ‘Tea Bladder’ by Iiris Riihimäki features a selection of recent paintings (in oil on canvas, with some variations) and painting-related objects, mapping how the natural world, in itself beyond taste, is claimed by humans as a tool for imposing their own world-view.

Updated weekly, SHAPE introduces and highlights a variety of current public events and exhibitions throughout the city.T...
12/11/2025

Updated weekly, SHAPE introduces and highlights a variety of current public events and exhibitions throughout the city.

This week’s highlights include four exhibitions:

📅 In Jyri Ala-Ruona’s exhibition APPARITIONS the paintings refer to energy flows and changes in the forms of energy. Stemming from personal history, the artist examines energy consumption and the relationship between painting and photography as manifestations of neuroticism.

📅 On view at Edris Samani’s newest work titled Lifeloop in which the centerpiece is a zoetrope, one of the earliest forms of animation, for which Samani has envisioned life as a continuous cycle – wherein everything is connected, transient, with no true beginning or end. Life is an endless motion of recurring days, nights, months, years, emotions, and experiences – which pass and repeat.

📅 .uniarts Academy of Fine Arts is resuming exchange exhibitions after a five-year break by joining forces with Berlin University of the Arts (UdK). The name of the exhibition, Einladung/Kutsu, draws from the idea of invitation – people are invited to come along, to stay and to interact.

📅 At until 14 November, s̶o̶r̶r̶y̶ is a show about text and texting, images as texts and texts as images, communication and connection, holding memory encrypted, keeping memory private in the public, oversharing, making sure we remember, making sure we keep in touch, trying to archive information and failing, renaming, imagining counter-languages, practicing q***r languages, saying all the things we have to say, speaking with an accent, talking talking talking about love, rejecting nationhood, tricking state control, questioning the I, self-censoring, defying censorship, mythologising the passing of time, humourizing the myth, only suggesting a narrative, failing to learn, loving to learn hard. Curated by Micol Curatolo, s̶o̶r̶r̶y̶ features work from Yujie Zhou, nadiye, ONCE WE WERE ISLANDS & Joni Judén, and Ora H., that explore language and storytelling, sharing tender and tentative attempts at a different communication.

Updated weekly, SHAPE introduces and highlights a variety of current public events and exhibitions throughout the city.T...
24/09/2025

Updated weekly, SHAPE introduces and highlights a variety of current public events and exhibitions throughout the city.

This week’s highlights include two events, one exhibition, and one installation:

📍.helsinki Taking place on Sept 25th Protocols for Melting by Joonas Hyvönen and Līga Spunde is a site-specific augmented reality walk, leading participants through forest trails of Helsinki Central Park and into the quiet landscapes of the Great Cemetery in Riga. Walk starting point: Maunula House at 5pm. 18:30–19:45 Artist talk (in English) & discussion with activists Susanna Pitkänen and Mina Laamo on Helsinki City’s plan to establish a site for snow dumping (in Finnish).

📍 is organising Positioning A Symposium on Curatorial Thinking in the Nordic-Baltic Region & Beyond, co-hosted by Amos Rex and Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, dedicated to curatorial thinking and publicness, bringing together artists, curators, and cultural workers from across the Nordic-Baltic region and beyond to share ideas, commission new works, and open dialogue between local and international contemporary art practices. Free and open for all. Note! Monday 29th and Thursday 2nd are fully booked. Read more at positioningsymposium.com

📅 On view at Venla Helenius’s new video work Destina. Destina takes as its starting point the femme-enfant figures painted by surrealist artist Dorothea Tanning in the 1940s and 1950s - figures that once rebelled against their prescribed role in art history, celebrating their unruly potential and creating autonomous surreal realities within domestic-like spaces.

📅 As a part of the InCollection exhibition series by EMMA and Saastamoinen Foundation, the kinetic installation Chiming Forest by Antti Laitinen invites us to consider humanity’s capacity and means to shape the natural world. The work is constructed from wood sourced throughout southern Finland, including brushwood left behind in logged areas and root systems of trees felled by wind.

Updated weekly, SHAPE introduces and highlights a variety of current public events and exhibitions throughout the city.T...
17/09/2025

Updated weekly, SHAPE introduces and highlights a variety of current public events and exhibitions throughout the city.

This week’s highlights include two events and two exhibitions:

📍 Field_Notes – Living Methodologies is held across two days and consists of ’Learning Endings: Ecologies of Care in Arts-Sciences Collaborations’ by Aleksija Neimanis and Astrida Neimanis on 17 Sept 2025 18:30—20:00, and ’SING Sábme – decolonizing science as a way of strengthening Sámi governance in settler colonial Europe’ by May-Britt Öhman on 19 Sep 2025 18:30—20:00 at Kilpisjärvi Biological Station and online. Both events are held in English.

📍Co-organised by and the Contemporary Performance Stage of Helsinki City Theatre, Discussion: The Work of a Curator in Contemporary Performance (held in Finnish), today September 17th, 18:00-19:30 at Tekstin Talo.

📅 Opening September 19th the group exhibition LET IT BE KNOWN, I AM STILL HERE features works by Liisa Ryynänen, Ronya Hirsma, Kristina Sedlerova Villanen, Mari Sunna and comissioned poem by Iona Carmine Roisin.

📅 Artists’ Island 2025 is a group exhibition featuring 26 artists, held on Harakka Island 10.–28.9.2025. The exhibition is a continuation of the Artists’ Island exhibitions held in 2021 and 2023 and is curated by Antti Kauppinen.

Updated weekly, SHAPE introduces and highlights a variety of current public events and exhibitions throughout the city.T...
10/09/2025

Updated weekly, SHAPE introduces and highlights a variety of current public events and exhibitions throughout the city.

This week’s highlights include four exhibitions:

📅 At Maija Majakka’s solo exhibition Pygmalion, featuring hand-built ceramic sculptures, the human being is the main focus. The new body of work deals with the construction and construction of the human figure into a particular mould and expectations. Pygmalion was a sculptor from ancient myths who carved a female figure from ivory to his own specifications and fell in love with it.

📅 In Kristin Wiking’s Wrestlers we witness an encounter between two opponents. In Wiking’s work, two inflatable puppets meet and test their light bodies against each other. When automated fans switch on, the characters come to life, seemingly moving on their own – gaining strength only to soon lose it again.

📅 Maria Pääkkönen’s solo exhibition Aikaikkuna.

📅 Opening on the 12th at .uniarts the 2025 BFA exhibition features works by 26 graduating Bachelor’s Fine Arts students.

Updated weekly, SHAPE introduces and highlights a variety of current public events and exhibitions throughout the city. ...
03/09/2025

Updated weekly, SHAPE introduces and highlights a variety of current public events and exhibitions throughout the city.
 
This week’s highlights include one event and three exhibitions:
 
The exhibition at is filled with a large patchwork backdrop, a temporary shelter, protective paper held up by sticks. Scattered throughout the space are photographs printed on handmade paper with natural dyes extracted from stinging nettles, seaweed, tansy, and other plants. The materials used in the works were sourced from parks and beaches around Helsinki, collected from trash cans and thrift stores, or donated by friends.
 
is opening on September 3 Aalto ARTS Grad Show 2025 showcasing the final projects of students graduating in architecture, design, film, art, and media. The show is a collection of 10 exhibitions, several film screenings and one performance.
 
The exhibition at Yö Galleria Vaihdokas/Changeling combines printmaking and audiovisual works, weaving together the world of folklore in the stories of changelings, the examination of bodily impressions and playful modulations of species-typical movement. The prints, realized on cold-worked glass and mirrors, take shape through the viewer’s gaze—one that the artworks seem to absorb and claim as their own.
 
is having their eighth edition of Bloom, the biannual young artists’ exhibition. Bloom exhibits the works of Finnish or Finland-based artists and artisans under the age of 35.

Updated weekly, SHAPE introduces and highlights a variety of current public events and exhibitions throughout the city. ...
29/08/2025

Updated weekly, SHAPE introduces and highlights a variety of current public events and exhibitions throughout the city.

This week’s highlights include one event and three exhibitions:

📍Maja Ambient is an experimental sound piece that invites listeners to connect with their environment through sound. It will take place on 30 August at and is organised by Maja Coffee Roastery (Kaya Nishikori and Tapani Huovinen). The event explores how the environment resonates with the human subconscious, aiming to evoke a feeling in those arriving. Held on Lasipalatsi Square, the program features seven artists and collectives working at the intersection of sound, performance, and sensory experience.

📅In this exhibition at , Lukas Malte Hoffmann has worked with promises as his thematic starting point. The sculptural entity constitutes a personal task in which Hoffmann focuses on the unwritten, yet fundamental forces that guide him in his everyday life and work. He puts the spotlight on promises as turning points or milestones in life. One idea underpinning the exhibition is how promises can also be embodied in objects, which can then give direction and meaning.

📅 is pleased to present A Thousand Plateaus, a solo exhibition by Finnish artist Lana Haga. The exhibition features new sculptures made of post-industrial plastic, reliefs made of cotton twine and oil paint as well as a textile and mirror installation, works that explore continuous transformation across material, process and conceptual systems. An audio work created in collaboration with the French sound artist Fayf Abad aims to activate the works in the exhibition and to create an immersive and contemplative space.

📅 On the last weekend of August students of and organize I thought the earth remembered me, a contemporary art event series pondering questions around digital storage and memory. Art School Maa, and the caves of Suomenlinna are filled with video art, performances, installation and sound art. Maa’s neighbour HIAP will host an opening of a new art book library that provides a space to read and rest.

Updated weekly, SHAPE introduces and highlights a variety of current public events and exhibitions throughout the city. ...
22/08/2025

Updated weekly, SHAPE introduces and highlights a variety of current public events and exhibitions throughout the city.

This week’s highlights include three events and one exhibition:

📍Money, grind, consumerism – steps on the way towards SUCCESS & GLORY. This year’s festival, organized by (AFA), takes over Easton mall to explore what success really means in contemporary society. Through the theme SUCCESS & GLORY, we dive into the ideals and narratives of a world that pushes individualism, competition, and constant self-improvement. More info about curated art exhibition and performances:

📅 Morphing into Something at is an exhibition composed of textile works that explore the oscillation between the roles of m/other* and artist. By drawing parallels between care work and the slow, deliberate process of hand-sewing and quilting, the artist documents and explores sensations, feelings and thoughts connected to becoming a m/other and simultaneously unbecoming.

📍Come listen to Swedish artist Oscar Furbacken discuss his works on microcosms. He will share insights into the artistic process that led him to develop the crack in his new site-specific installation Tear, which is permanently on display at new Luova – Event Space.

📍Sacral Essays is a site-specific performance that will be experienced in Alppila Church on 20-23 August 2025. The work explores where we can gather together to deal with existential, joy and sorrow and cosmic issues of life as part of everyday life. The Alppila church is the setting for the work and an example of a wider phenomenon where many modern churches built in the 1960s and 1990s are being demolished or closed due to low use and structural problems. The work is a co-production of the Live Art Society, and the Union of Young Power.

Updated weekly, SHAPE introduces and highlights a variety of current public events and exhibitions throughout the city. ...
15/08/2025

Updated weekly, SHAPE introduces and highlights a variety of current public events and exhibitions throughout the city.

This week’s highlights include two exhibitions and two events:

📅 In August, presents visual artist Elina Nissinen’s first solo exhibition, hunajakuu / honey moon. The show features an immersive installation that takes over the gallery space, created by Nissinen during a month-long residency in July. Throughout the residency, Nissinen worked in dialogue with dramaturge Masi Tiitta and curator Remi Vesala.

📅 The exhibition at traces the journey of the fruit sold in Finnish grocery shops back to the south of Spain in Murcia, where large quantities of fruit are produced for the European market. The artist Myriam Gras follows the work of local peach farmers who narrate how the landscape and horticulture have been transformed by the expansion of agricultural technologies, the taste of consumers elsewhere, and the impact of climate change.

📍 and Sympoietic Society co-host a dialogue between Mari Keski-Korsu and the Baltic Sea that draws on her work with intuitive more-than-human communication, hydrobodily care, healing practices, agency, empathy, and grief at . In her practice, Keski-Korsu attends to hyper questions of ecological crises through micro-level manifestations. Her current project More than Person River, in collaboration with artist Eija Mäkivuoti, explores the possibilities of more-than-human decision making and agency of Torne river.

📍 Interior Motives: The Musical at explores both an interior world of the body-mind and the dynamics of a collective creative process. Drawing on the technique of Authentic-Stream-Of-Consciousness-Singing, developed by artist Dafna Maimon, the performance emerges through surreal meandering scenes where everyday life and the act of creating art intersect.

Updated weekly, SHAPE introduces and highlights a variety of current public events and exhibitions throughout the city. ...
08/08/2025

Updated weekly, SHAPE introduces and highlights a variety of current public events and exhibitions throughout the city. 

This week’s highlights include four exhibitions:

📅On the Move is movement in time – a glance at the past and a glimpse into the future. It is the movement of color and line on linen and paper.  On the Move is also the act of moving from Harakka to the mainland. My studio lease ends next year. On the Move will be my final solo exhibition on at Galleria Lennätin.

📅The Association of Finnish Sculptors’ Duo Exhibition is a concept that brings together the works and practices of two association members at different stages of their careers. The fourth Duo Exhibition at features artists Matti Peltokangas (b. 1952) and Emma Jääskeläinen (b. 1988), whose works share an emphasis on materiality and persistence.

📅And at the Height of the Third Day at is an experimental stop motion animation about the transformation of an old photograph in a post-memory afterlife.

📅Panoramic Unapologetic Kinetic Embodiment by Lù Chén & Vertti Luostarinen at explores the glitches in mobile phone panoramas as a choreography that captures the shapes of our movements. Consisting of photographs and interactive digital artworks, the exhibition displays our personal archive of wideness.

Updated weekly, SHAPE introduces and highlights a variety of current public events and exhibitions throughout the city. ...
01/08/2025

Updated weekly, SHAPE introduces and highlights a variety of current public events and exhibitions throughout the city.

This week’s highlights include two events and two exhibitions:

📅 Liisa-Irmelen Liwata’s exhibition at the gallery explores movements in which we become a landscape and movements in which we form ourselves from a landscape. Porous sandy areas, ceramic surfaces and multipolar bronze statues create the suggestion of a changing national landscape.

📍Diablada In-apropiada, a ceremony by Impropias Collective at is rooted in joy and mischief. Diabladas are vibrant, irreverent celebrations from Latin America that rebel against the fearful colonial and Catholic conception of the Devil, transforming it through dance and satire into a symbol of cultural resilience. Our playful take on Diabladas and their characters resignifies these traditions and brings these collective fiestas to Helsinki. We will dance, we will shout, we will feast.

📅 When I talk about my home, my relatives ask me which one do I mean? Is it the one in Poland, where I was born, or the one in Helsinki, where I have lived and worked for almost 3 decades? Postcards Dropped on the Way Home at combines pictures from my numerous performances around the world, alongside the fresh analog records and objects used for the actions in the gallery.

📍RED – ROT at @ toinensilma is a physical live performance by actor and performing artist Ilana Palmgren, sound artist Joni Salmela, and visual and lighting designer Jaakko Sirainen. RED – ROT explores the phenomenon of dissociation both as a symptom and a coping mechanism. More info and bookings:

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