SHAPE Helsinki Art Map, Helsinki (2025)

25/07/2025

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:

📅 Scores, sound and video, selected and presented by the composer, sound artist and events organiser Charlie Morrow (US/Finland, 1942) in collaboration with Livia Schweizer, Oliver George-Brown and Isaac Otto. The pop-up exhibition at happens in connection with the outdoor event SoundCircus, which is organised by Morrow and NOT-Productions.

📅 Ulla Prami show is now open at until 27 July. Opening hours: Tue-Sun 12-17, closed Mondays & Sat 19.7. Welcome!

📅 For the summer, will be populated by V01D Plushies, creatures from the end of the world. Plushies are comfort buddies that provide hope for overturning the looming future and mascots for facing the present moment. Bond with these beings, as they are meant as transitional objects in living through the forthcoming environmental changes and thus help cope with the evident losses we are about to endure.

📍 warmly welcomes architecture worker, musician, and broadcaster Simona Castricum, who will lecture on auto-speculation as a tool for trans spatial production across architecture and music. Simona frames transing as the imagination of worlds within impossible thresholds of contest—for urgent, necessary futures.

17/07/2025

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

This week’s highlights include four exhibitions:

📅This year’s summer exhibition at is titled CTRL+ART. The group exhibition features a compelling mix of newly graduated and established artists, showcasing a wide spectrum of artistic disciplines. From painting to performance, the exhibition offers a dynamic insight into the richness and diversity of contemporary art.

📅 The 31st text of the is now out. It is written by Drifting with clay and designed by Joosung Kang. The text is on view from 26 June to 3 September, 2025. The text is the first out of six selected through our open call.

📅 The Arabia Art Department Society (Arabian Taideosastoyhdistys) was founded in 2003 to continue the legacy of the Arabia factory’s art department, originally established in the 1930s. It played a key role in the development of Finnish ceramic art. Currently, eleven artists work at the Arabia Art Department Society. The show of Arabia Art Department Society is on at until 3 August.

📅Magnus Strandberg’s exhibition Herbarium at is like a collage that combines urban nature, vegetation, and materiality. Herbarium is the second part of Magnus Strandberg’s exhibition trilogy.The exhibition series is based on the artist’s long-standing interest in the Taivalsaari area, located in Hietaniemi, Helsinki. The area is considered wasteland, and it represents a type of environment that is becoming increasingly rare in the center of Helsinki.

11/07/2025

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

This week’s highlights include four exhibitions:

📅Nature Paths at is an installation created site-specifically for Sports Hall Window by artist Dana Neilson. By collecting birth stories from friends, Neilson questions the common rushed and screaming birth scenario overused in mainstream media, offering alternative narratives in the form of personal accounts.

📅 Soft Nightmare at is a conversation between contrasts, where one shouts and the other whispers. It is the meeting of shadow and light, a journey into the terrain between nightmares and something better. The theme collides seemingly incompatible objects, transforming assumed contradictions into possible harmony. A group show, featuring members of the 2024 board of the Artists’ Association Yö, brings together works from nine artists at Yö Galleria: Kalle Ahonen, Krista Blomqvist, Anne Kaski-Kløve, Laura Kopio, Johannes Länsiö, Anu Miettinen, Tanja Nyo, Henriikka Pöllänen, Seppo Renvall.

📅The world is obsessed with love and individuals as well as our society strive for definitions on what the words “love” and “lover” truly resemble. What’s your venus sign? What’s the difference between true love and limerence? Does the world overlook certain representations of romance? “All the World Loves a Lover” group exhibition curated by at showcases 24 artists’ and working groups’ interpretations on what it means to be a lover in today’s world.

📅 Fidgety Shores Of The Makeshift City at is an exhibition that dialogue with the ever-present construction sites in Helsinki. The exhibition questions the practice of dismantling and rebuilding, with which the city eats its landscape, revealing our society’s compulsory tendency to dispose, accumulation and expansion. Works by Francesca Bogani Amadori, Henry Lämsä, Pääsky Miettinen. Curator: Micol Curatolo.

02/07/2025

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

This week’s highlights include four exhibitions:

📅Rituaalit show is now open at . The show features Uliana Tyllinen, Emmi Ylijoki, Maria Teplykh, Sanna Ulvila, Nita Virkki, Piia Vainio, Maria Takaki, Tuire Koskela, Krista Blomqvist, Kaisa Sipponen, Agnieszka Wajda-Hänninen, Sanna Härkönen, Noora Aaltonen, Silja Kumpulainen, Sannamari Sorvari, Salla Lemponen, Anniina Ukkonen.

📅Charles Sandison’s new installation Tabula Rasa at depicts words spilling out of open, empty books and moving towards each other in a continuous stream. The title refers to philosopher John Locke’s theory that humans begin life as a ‘blank slate’ onto which experiences and meanings are gradually imprinted. In Sandison’s Tabula Rasa, the blank slate is an ideological battlefield pitting words against each other as they compete to fill the empty pages.

📅 .site is very excited to announce the next exhibition 1.2 with the amazing Ida Tomminen, Noora Schroderus and Martin Zet! The show is open until 6 July.

📅 Finnish empathy artist Enni-Kukka Tuomala (b. 1987), based in London, creates an experimental space for encounters, verbal and non-verbal connection, and self-reflection in her exhibition Expanding Empathies at Studio Rex (). At the heart of the exhibition is the participatory installation Empathy Echo Chamber, which invites two strangers to step into a guided experience. This rare, intimate moment designed for just two people encourages the sharing and reflection of experiences together.

19/06/2025

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

This week’s highlights include four exhibitions:

📅The works in Kristiina Mäenpää’s Lunar Caustic at have emerged at the points of contact between earth and image, through analogue photographic techniques and sculptural methods. The exhibition’s title refers to the informal name for silver nitrate, a fundamental component of analogue photography. Silver salts give photographs their light sensitivity, and thereby the ability to make time visible.

📅 spring season concludes with The Spider Learned to Count, Heini Aho‘s insightful, witty and wise show in which she plays with everyday objects scaled up to monumental proportions and examines seemingly insignificant things.

📅This summer, has the privilege of showing works by the Swedish artist Tobias Bradford, who has attracted increasing attention in recent years for his animated, mixed-media sculptures depicting deconstructed human figures, body parts and limbs. In his new exhibition, Health and Safety, Bradford addresses ideas about the complex relationship between the individual and society.

📅The 30th text of the is now out. It is written by Jaana Okulov and Teppo Vesikukka and designed by Anna-Mari Tenhunen. The text is on view from 5 to 26 June, 2025.

12/06/2025

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:

📍In 2024, published seven online issues with over 65 contributions from writers and artists based in Finland and internationally. ‘NO NIIN Volume 4: Rebellion is on Their Way’ includes Elham Rahmati and Vidha Saumya’s editorial picks of these contributions. The publication presents 34 contributions, including essays, reviews, interviews, and artworks. This volume, with an exceptional cover illustration by Golrokh Nafisi, is beautifully designed by Samar Zureik and Lèo Guibert. The launch event starts at 18:00. Elham Rahmati and Vidha Saumya will give a short introduction to the publication at 18:30.

📍Lehtolaulu is a multidisciplinary production by the KATOAVA collective, created and performed at @ Vapaan Taiteen Tila. Did you know that the word “hiisi” originally referred to sacred groves in the cultures of the Finnic peoples, where rituals were held and loved ones were buried? Lehtolaulu takes you to hiisi—we explore groves, the journey there, and our own relationships with the mythologies of forests. More info and tickets:

📅 is pleased to present Pillows Were Soft by Sallamari Rantala (FI) and Marta Fréjuté (LT) from 5.–15.6.2025 at Satamakatu 3 A 10, 00160 Helsinki. The exhibition is a continuation of the artists’ collaborative exhibition It Used to Be a Castle, which was on display at Editorial Gallery in Vilnius in 2025. Rantala and Fréjutés curious gaze and imagination draw connections through matter and concepts, raising questions about the human relationship to material, history, and time.

📅Liisa Ryynänen and Justiina Mäenpää explore a different approach to architecture in their works at . What happens if the meaning and aesthetics of architectural representations are separated from their practical purposes? The exhibition consists of Mäenpää’s paintings and Ryynänen’s sculptural installation. A text by artist Helmi Kajaste has been commissioned for the exhibition catalogue.

05/06/2025

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

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

📅 Trunk at explores the connection between faith and memory. The works, consisting of a variety of objects and materials, have all undergone a process of replacing, disassembling and stretching their original components. Textiles have begun to dissolve, a deformed image has lost its sharpness, and a seemingly natural tree trunk turns out to be a machine-made copy; a log, with neither the possibility of taking root nor forming branches.

📍 Theatre’s annual festival of urban art and culture will be held for the 26th time this year. The URB 25 festival invites you to experience performances that draw from the creators’ own roots, but open up to a broader interpretation of the state of the contemporary world. The URB 25 festival programme is curated by Jonna Strandberg, Yilin Ma, Lucian Lovén, Gabriel Karhu & Aarni Pieski.

📅Filmed within the coastal landscape of Pernaja in Southern Finland, Georgie Goater’s work at window explores the body in relation. Bodies of water; ice, clouds, trees, and moss invite bodily sensing and spontaneous, undirected movement to arise in between these bodies of various temporalities and the camera.

📅The sea, the water beneath its surface, the Finnish archipelago, sailing over the course of decades in those landscapes. In the background, in concerts, music on the radio is playing, melodies and a song piece, while painting. The impression of the experienced, it conveyes inexorable influence of the atmosphere of the sea and the imprint of music in Riitta Kilpi show at .

16/04/2025

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

This week’s highlights include four exhibitions:

📅 The exhibition Steps in the City at explores the layering of cities. The exhibition examines how issues related to the physical, cultural and visual construction of cities have been dealt with in the visual arts. The works on display at the exhibition also approach the urban environment as a space that tells about power and a place where power is exercised. In addition to this, the exhibition discusses experiences related to the urban environment in terms of safety and insecurity.

📅 Arte Povera – A New Chapter at explores how especially women artists have worked in the spirit of the Arte Povera movement from the 1960s to the present. The term Arte Povera, literally meaning “poor art”, refers to a movement that emerged in Italy in the late 1960s, when artists began creating works from discarded and modest everyday materials.

📅 In her solo exhibition house like moon at , Eeva Lietonen explores the experience of being in the world, materiality, and the layers of time. The exhibition intertwines past and present, the visible and the invisible. Themes such as soil, release, touch, and the cycle of matter create encounters where growth and decay, understanding and hesitation coexist.

📅 is delighted to present the first Helsinki Affordable Art Fair 2025. This event provides a unique platform to showcase diverse artistic expressions in an inclusive and accessible environment. By prioritizing affordability, the fair aims to make original art accessible to both seasoned collectors and newcomers alike. Artworks will range anywhere from 50€ to 400€. The project is in partnership with and curated by Dahlia El Broul.

09/04/2025

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:

📍Welcome to a conversation with choreographer Camilla Stage (DK), who will share insights into her work and thought process behind the project The Ageing Body. How can the physical, psychological, energetic, and spiritual transformations that accompany ageing be made visible? If preconceived notions of aesthetics and rigid body ideals are set aside, what new forms of expression become possible through dance and choreography? The conversation will take place on 9 April, from 16:00 to 17:00, at the Nordic Library.

📍 The Tiny, Huge Zine is printed on thermal paper and displayed at the window. It continues a series of zine-making and reading activities presented in various formats and sizes. While the themes of the artist’s zines often explore neurodiversity and queerness in Finland, this edition focuses on other mundane topics, such as correspondences and childhood memories in South America. Fran Trento (b. Brazil, 1987) is an artist-researcher living in Helsinki, Finland and São Paulo, Brazil.

📅 Echo Ballads // Pasián Esba at is a live performance and exhibition by Q***r collective ONCE WE WERE ISLANDS, and represents the Seventh Chapter of the constellation artwork With Forests in Our Mouths (2024/25). Opening performance Thursday 10.4. at 18–20. ONCE WE WERE ISLANDS are Aslan and Chris. We make performance, film and publications from our home in Outokumpu, North Karelia.

📅 Ushering in the next new season of unprecedented unpredictability, spring exhibition 2025 brings together new and recent work by Lasse Juuti (Finland, 1990, lives in Helsinki) and Anastasia Sosunova (Lithuania, 1993, lives in Vilnius). Both artists navigate the choppy waters of the complete and the open-ended, the articulate and the visceral, mediation and immediacy.

04/04/2025

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

This week’s highlights include four exhibitions:

📅Jaakko Hukkanen exhibition at consists of oil and beeswax paintings on canvas as well as framed pastels that explore a spatial experience and its meanings through visual arts. The works create parallel, inner spaces and offer the viewer an opportunity to step from the physical world into separate, symbolic and mental spaces, dream-like realities.

📅 In Anna Estarriola’s (b.1980) art, the borders of what is possible and impossible become ambiguous and our ways of perceiving reality are examined from many different vantage points and perspectives. In April 2025, Estarriola’s extensive solo exhibition Staged Circumstances and Piles of Things will open in the main exhibition hall of . Estarriola was born in Catalonia and currently works in Helsinki.

📅The origin of Garden-Theatre is to be found in the intersection of Roumagnac’s new project, Stages of Flower Power/s (2025-2028), and his second exploration of the Museum of Scenic Arts (Barcelona) reserves and collections, carried out in collaboration with Carme Carreño Pombar, curator of the archive, in October 2024. This time in the artist researcher focused on late 19th-century theatre set models and sketches featuring floral and garden motifs, a period significantly shaped by the transformative influence of electric power on Western scenographic aesthetics.

📅 In her B/looming exhibition at Milla Aska works with states and zones situated between material, body, and mind. Aska uses composition and brushwork to evoke tensions and movement in her paintings. The shapes and colour surfaces in these abstract, intensely physical works are in a constant shifting state. When observing the paintings and giving them time, the liminal qualities of Aska’s paintwork become tangible. As the image unfolds and reveals itself, a distance is created for the viewer. It is as if she succeeds in capturing a blur, a haziness – an outright mystery.

26/03/2025

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:

📍The bilingual performance art piece Celestial Body at invites the audience to follow a planetary love story inside a planetarium. We reach for the stars that shine bright or fade away – and sometimes they answer the call of a loved one. Performer Silva Belghiti acts as the audience’s travel guide to the cold embrace of outer space and back. The performance is part of the Milky Way Tour exhibition programme.

📍 The exhibition at by Essi Nieminen consists of paintings featuring a character called Pieni (=Small). Pieni encounters many thoughts, feelings and moods... Shapes, aspirations, prisons, being with others, moments of presence, nagging and pouting. Oh Small! (compassionately stated).

📅 Becoming Many at curated by María Villa, Kemê Pellicer, Lotta Esko is a multifaceted reflection on the many ways we are undone, made, and remade by each other. The works of twelve artists and practitioners come together to reflect on how our lives aren’t just our individual lives but are deeply weaved with the lives of others.

📅 For Swallowed Rooms at Océane Bruel and dylan ray arnold present sculptural and spatial works that combine lived environments with corporeal and mental spaces. The artists invent love and loss of personal and domestic attachments. The title of the show suggests the metabolic nature of the artist’s practices - chewing, transforming and articulating materials, spaces and experiences.

21/03/2025

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:

📍We invite you to join us to organise Katie Paterson’s Commission 2021 To Burn, Forest, Fire incense ceremony on the International Day of Forests 21 March 2025. Paterson’s IHME Helsinki Commission 2021 titled To Burn, Forest, Fire consists of the scent of the first-ever forest on earth and the scent of the last forest of the age of climate crisis. Invite your family, friends and closed ones to join your private incense ceremony on the International Day of Forests in March in your chosen location.

📍 is delighted to host for the first time in Helsinki, acclaimed Black feminist writer, researcher, and organizer Lola Olufemi. Her work interrogates the structures of oppression while imagining liberatory futures rooted in collective struggle, radical politics, and care. On 21 March, Olufemi’s lecture and workshop will explore the uses of the political imagination as it relates to crisis, cultural work and the archival material of radical social movements.

📍 Open Studios Winter 2025 event offers the unique opportunity to meet up and engage into conversations with the resident artists and curators, get to know more about their practice, and view the work that they are currently developing as part of their residency. Check the programme and other event info

📅In her exhibition at gallery, Laura Böök explores work, breaks, and workplace break rooms. What do everyday spaces tell us about the changing work life, the way people are perceived in various workplaces, and how employees’ needs are addressed? Laura Böök (b.1986) is a Helsinki-based artist who works with moving image, photography, and text.

SHAPE Helsinki Art Map