HAM Helsinki Art Museum exhibitions

Katharina Grosse: Chill Seeping from the Walls Gets Between Us (exhibition view), 2021/ Photo: HAM/Hanna Kukorelli

In addition to the VIP events HAM Helsinki Art Museum exhibitions are free to experience for VIP guests. Opening hours during 2.9.-4.9. as follows:

Thursday
11:30-19:00

Friday
11:30-19:00

Saturday
11:30-19:00

Katharina Grosse: Chill Seeping from the Walls Gets between Us
8.6.2021-23.1.2022

German artist Katharina Grosse has become internationally known for her large on-site paintings, which she sprays across objects, architectural structures and landscapes. In her first solo exhibition in Finland, Grosse will be taking over both of the arched halls on the upper floor of HAM. On display will be two new pieces for which the artists will transform the exhibition spaces into massive, all-encompassing spatial works of art. Grosse will be painting one of the two pieces on-site, using the bright and vibrant colours characteristic of her art.

Lallukka – Life in the Home of Artists
13.11.2020-24.10.2021

There is no other building in Finland that has housed as many well-known artists: to this day, more than 130 visual artists and a host of musicians and stage artists have stayed at the Artists’ Home. The first artists to move into the Artists’ Home, completed in 1933, included Marcus Collin, Ester Helenius, Eero Nelimarkka, Venny Soldan-Brofeldt and Ellen Thesleff. The Lallukka – Life in the Home of Artists exhibition showcases 43 visual artists who have stayed at the Home and 61 works from 1933 to modern times. Lallukka’s modern artists included in the exhibition are Elina Merenmies, Inka Nieminen and Tommi Toija.

Mario Rizzi: BAYT (HOME), 2013-2019
12.6.2021-26.9.2021

HAM will show BAYT (HOME), the film trilogy of Mario Rizzi, as part of the Helsinki Biennial. The trilogy is shown repeatedly in the HAM Hall when the museum is open. Al Inithar, a film included in the trilogy, as well as Rizzi’s photos can also be seen in Vallisaari’s Luotsitalo.

In the first film of the trilogy BAYT, Al Intithar (The Waiting, 2013), home is reduced to a tent in a refugee camp in the middle of a Jordanian desert. The film follows seven weeks in the life of its main protagonist, Ekhlas, a relentless woman who has fled the Syrian war together with her three children. The tragic ramifications of the war are felt keenly in the daily lives of the refugee family.

In the second film, Kauther (2014), we meet the Tunisian activist Kauther Ayari, the first activist to give a passionate and inspired voice to Tunis rioters during the 2011 Tunisian Revolution. She shares her thoughts on life, the build-up of 2011 and the conditions of being a woman in Arabic society.

The third film of the trilogy, The Little Lantern (2019), was shot in Beirut and tells the story of an 84-year-old Danish woman, Anni Høver Kanafani, who travelled to Beirut in the 1960s to meet the acclaimed Palestinian writer, poet and activist Ghassan Kanafani. She married him and has been living in Lebanon throughout all her life, choosing the Beirut refugee camps as her “home”. After her husband’s death, Anni Kanafani continued to work in Palestinian camps – now also crowded by Syrians – creating kindergartens for refugee children.

Mario Rizzi’s (b. 1962, Italy) films look at topical social issues such as migration and questions revolving around borders, identity, and the sense of belonging. He analyses these broad themes through micronarratives about people’s daily lives, experiences and memories.

HAM Mix: Come Back as a Flower
20.8.2021-9.1.2022

Come Back as a Flower is a group exhibition weaving delicately around the Silueta series (1973–1977) by Ana Mendieta, held in HAM’s collections. The exhibition creates subtle dialogue between Mendieta’s series and the other pieces in the exhibition, suggesting loose connections and approaches between them. Above all, the exhibition is a space for different forms of sensing, providing visitors with a space for being and thinking.⁣⁣
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While working on the Silueta series, Ana Mendieta developed her pioneering work based on performance, land art, ecofeminist politics and spirituality, and photograph and video documentation. Today, Mendieta’s unique practice is once again extremely relevant, highlighting observations about the relationship between humans and nature, the personal as political, the layered nature of identity, mysticalspirituality, and the material nature of art.⁣⁣

The exhibition includes new commissions by Essi Kausalainen and Elina Vainio, as well as new versions of existing pieces. Additionally, the  exhibition contains different spatial and temporal dimensions: it features Anne Koskinen’s public artwork Stone (2008), which is located  outside the HAM facilities in the Aurinkolahti area in Vuosaari. Melanie Bonajo’s video piece Night Soil – Nocturnal Gardening (2016), on the other hand, will be shown in the HAM Auditorium starting in October.

The artists in the exhibition are: Melanie Bonajo, Carola Grahn, Eva Gyldén, Evan Ifekoya, Emma Jääskeläinen, Catharina Kajander, Essi Kausalainen, Anne Koskinen, Ana Mendieta and Elina Vainio. The exhibition is curated by Elina Suoyrjö.⁣⁣

More information about the exhibitions:
https://www.hamhelsinki.fi/en/exhibitions/