Tamara Henderson’s (b. 1982) imaginative, exuberant art examines our planet’s intelligence and beauty in ways that subtly but radically relegate humans to the margins.
Her body of work celebrates the unsung heroes of our ecosystems: earthworms. These industrious but mostly invisible creatures form the starting point for Henderson’s explorations of metabolic vitality, compost, and the deep intertwinement of the Earth and the bodies inhabiting it.
Photo: Panos Fourtoulakis
Tamara Henderson: Worm Affair, 2023. Helsinki Biennial 8.6.–21.9.2025, Vallisaari Island. Photo: HAM / Helsinki Biennial / Sonja Hyytiäinen
Worm Affair, 2023
Artwork location: Vallisaari Island
More-than-human species are the co-creators of Worm Affair, Henderson’s installation presented in Vallisaari Island’s Alexander Battery, which visits hidden subterranean realms through the medium of sound. The artist plunges us deep into compost by transmitting a live audio feed of compost worms transforming death and decay into rebirth and growth as they tunnel through decomposing organic matter. Their rhythmic munching and burbling digestion create a compelling soundscape that places us intimately inside a world below ground that is normally hidden from humans.
Tamara Henderson: It fell asleep as eye but now a nose; From deep in a dream admiring the rose; It tries to stretch and finds it has no toes; What is this volume? I can not see the room; It reeks of sunlight, something other than a tomb, 2023.Helsinki Biennial 8.6.–21.9.2025, HAM Helsinki Art Museum. Courtesy of Sylvia Kouvali London/Pireus. Photo: HAM / Helsinki Biennial / Sonja Hyytiäinen
From deep in a dream admiring the rose, 2023
It tries to stretch and finds it has no toes, 2023
It fell asleep as eye but now a nose, 2023
What is this volume? I can not see the room, 2023
It reeks of sunlight, something other than a tomb, 2023
Artwork location: HAM Helsinki Art Museum
The well-nigh alchemical power of worms as shapers and creators of fertile soil is suggested both literally and metaphorically in Henderson’s series of paintings displayed in HAM’s north gallery. The paintings were made as an extension of the artist’s body and mind following Trataka meditation. The blue-framed paintings relate to a figure called ‘The Director’. They are self-portraits depicting the artist in a Reiki healing session with four amphibious ancestors. The ‘soil characters’ in turn embody vital energy reaching down beneath the ground in order to sprout upwards as a plant, connecting the earthly realm with the source of light in the vast cosmos. The green and yellow-framed paintings relate to the principle of Light, which in Henderson’s personal cosmology is concerned with the sun, moon and shadow, a transformative energy and source of visionary insight.