Enni-Kukka Tuomala: Expanding Empathies
April 2–August 31, 2025
Helsinki FI-00100
Finland
Hours: Monday and Wednesday–Friday 11am–8pm
Saturday–Sunday 11am–5pm
What happens when we step outside our own bubbles and open our eyes to new ways of seeing? Amos Rex’s spring exhibitions bring together two artists whose works portray attempts at communicating and at understanding others—sometimes effortlessly, sometimes falteringly, but always offering new insights.
The exhibition by Catalan-born, Helsinki-resident Anna Estarriola (b. 1980) in Amos Rex’s large domed galleries opens up the impossible to multiple interpretations, and explores our perception of reality from several different viewpoints. Staged Circumstances and Piles of Things consists of 17 installations whose scales vary from one work to another, while our senses become more acute as the experience constantly takes on new forms.
The exhibition extends in a winding labyrinth across Amos Rex’s subterranean spaces in Helsinki, Finland, with scales and distances varying from one work to the next, while the shifting angle of view activates our different senses. The combination of sculpture, moving image, sound and electronics creates a dynamic experience in which each installation takes us on a journey towards multiform understandings and insights.
Anna Estarriola is an award-winning media artist whose multi-layered works draw influences from science, various belief systems, and elsewhere. She received the AVEK Award in 2015 and has a five-year Finnish State artist grant. Estarriola has had exhibitions in Finland and internationally, and her art is, for instance, in the collections of the Finnish National Gallery and Saastamoinen Foundation.
The exhibition at Amos Rex is Estarriola’s largest solo showing to date and is curated by Katariina Timonen.
Enni-Kukka Tuomala’s (b. 1987) Expanding Empathies exhibition in Studio Rex creates an experimental space for encounters and self-reflection. At its heart is the participatory installation Empathy Echo Chamber, which invites two strangers to step into a guided encounter, to share experiences and reflect on them together. The artwork has previously attracted attention in London and is now being shown in Finland for the first time as part of Tuomala’s new body of works. The work continues her long-term exploration of invisible in-between spaces that either unite us or separate us.
Enni-Kukka Tuomala is a Finnish artist living in London. Her multidisciplinary and research-based practice examines the relationships between empathy, power, space and systems. She has previously collaborated with the Finnish Parliament and created empathy tools for politics in partnership with Members of Parliament.
Expanding Empathies is Tuomala’s first solo show in Finland. The exhibition has been curated by Anastasia Isakova.
“We are excited to host the biggest show of Anna Estarriola’s work yet staged. Her work is funny, beautiful and speaks to deep questions of identity and selfhood in the contemporary world. It is also wonderful to present Enni-Kukka Tuomala’s Empathy Echo Chamber in Studio Rex—a project close to our heart as we explore the possibilities of social encounters in a museum setting”, says Amos Rex’s Museum Director Kieran Long.
Anna Estarriola’s Staged Circumstances and Piles of Things and Enni-Kukka Tuomala’s Expanding Empathies are at Amos Rex April 2–August 31, 2025
Press photos: media.amosrex.fi
