Helsinki 00100
Finland
The theme of the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma’s 2019 programme is goodness, with exhibitions and performances throughout the year exploring the ideas of giving, sharing, hospitality and encounters. Kiasma will invite viewers to make art themselves and to experience first-hand its power to bring joy and inspiration. Goodness comes from action, and it thrives on sharing.
Solo exhibitions
The backbone of the 2019 exhibition programme consists of impressive solo exhibitions. The year will kick off in February with a show by the internationally renowned New York-based Icelandic artist Hrafnhildur Arnardóttir, aka Shoplifter, who creates installations from synthetic hair. The subtly humorous installations are massive, allowing viewers to enter them and to stroke the hair. Mounted in the fifth-floor galleries, the exhibition will also include musical performances, discussions and other events and programmes, such as the Performing Love happening organised with Love Foundation. Shoplifter has been appointed to represent Iceland in the 2019 Venice Biennale.
Finnish artist Iiu Susiraja is deservedly famous for her candid self-portraits in which she poses for the camera in everyday situations at home. The works inspire us to see our culturally charged ideas about body image, sexuality and femininity. The pictures are warm-hearted and humorous. Susiraja’s photographs and videos will be on display from March. The show includes both early works and more recent pieces.
The major work of the autumn will be Ragnar Kjartansson’s installation The Visitors. A celebration of creativity, community and friendship, the work takes its title from ABBA’s last album. The performance of each musician in Kjartansson’s videos were recorded separately. When all nine solo takes are projected simultaneously, the components blend into a single, impressive performance. The work transforms the gallery into a poignant and total musical experience.
The autumn also features works by Norwegian artist Torbjørn Rødland from his exhibition Fifth Honeymoon. He is known for carefully staged, beautiful photographs that evoke powerful emotions. The subject is often a person in a disturbingly intimate situation filled with tension and which allows multiple interpretations.
Engaging the viewer
In the spring, one floor of Kiasma will be taken over by participatory and experiential works exploring the themes of giving and hospitality. The featured works will include The Mending Project by Taiwanese artist Lee Mingwei in which he mends visitors’ clothes. David Shrigley invites visitors to draw croquis sketches of a humorous sculpture, with the sketches then mounted on the wall in the same space as the sculpture. Other featured artists are Christian Falsnaes, Camille Henrot and Amalia Pica.
The new collection exhibition that opens in April 2019 will explore the relationship between humanity and the environment. How is nature depicted in contemporary art? What the criteria of good life are from the perspective of non-human species? Although artists have long been interested in environmental questions, nature and the coexistence of humans and animals, these issues have taken on a new urgency in the 2000s. The show is a call for empathy and solidarity—including between species. In August the extension of the collection display pursues a world of a deeper relationship with nature, rites and alternative knowing. In addition to the need for spirituality, the exhibition also interrogates the limits of human knowledge and imagination.
The year also includes presentation of the next artist in the "Kiasma Commission by Kordelin" series. The Nordic Pavilion in the Venice Biennale will present an exhibition commissioned and curated by Kiasma under the title Weather Report: Forecasting the Future. Artists of the exhibition are Ane Graf from Norway, Ingela Ihrman from Sweden and artist duo nabbteeri from Finland.
Hrafnhildur Arnardóttir / Shoplifter: February 8–September 15, 2019
Iiu Susiraja: March 15–July 28, 2019
Torbjørn Rødland: September 13, 2019–January 5, 2020
Ragnar Kjartansson: October 11, 2019–February 2, 2020
Lee Mingwei, David Shrigley, Christian Falsnaes, Camille Henrot, Amalia Pica: February 8–August 18, 2019
Collection exhibition: April 26, 2019–March 1, 2020 and August 23, 2019–February 2, 2020
Kiasma Commission by Kordelin: March 15–July 28, 2019
Weather Report: Forecasting Future: May 11–November 24, 2019
