Helsinki Biennial

After delicious hotel breakfast we walked to Kauppatori and took a ferry to the Vallisaari island, where contemporary art event Helsinki Biennial takes place. Helsinki Biennial presents 41 international artists/groups of artists from both Finland and around the world. 

In the picture is a detail of Laura Könönen's installation No heaven up in the sky.
A piece of sky that has fallen to earth and now lies on the ground in shatters. Visitors arrive on the scene of the rubble, bearing witness to a dramatic turn of events. Könönen’s sculpture can be interpreted as a symbolic representation of change: structures or truths we believe to be solid and everlasting turn out to be unstable and irreparably broken, forcing us to revisit our ideas about stability and permanence. 

Extra photos' art works:

Alicja Kwade: Pars pro Toto
Eight massive stone spheres resembling the planets of our solar system lie on the rocky shore. Their many layers act as a timescale showing how the rocks were formed over several million years. The title, Pars pro Toto, “a part for the whole”, expresses how the same structures are found repeatedly from atoms to galaxies. Individual existence is always relative to the vaster scale of time and matter.


Dafna Maimon: Indigestibles
Maimon transforms the gunpowder cellar into a human digestive system. Comprising video, installation, sound and performance, her work reflects on the lost condition of modern humanity and our estrangement from ourselves and nature. It is a portrait of Shelly, a stressed-out, self-destructive woman whose life lacks meaning and content. Bacteria, intestines, internal organs, and undigested food are interwoven in a biological landscape scarred by traumatic experiences. The mind, digestive system and bacterial colonies are connected as part of a symbiotic ecosystem that mirrors the stressed condition of our planet. Laced with warm humor, the work illustrates how the mind, body, humans, and nature are entwined in a complex web.

Margaret & Christine Wertheim: Helsinki Satellite Reef
The crocheted coral reef celebrates nature’s diversity and the power of collaboration. It is also a reminder of the vulnerability of coral reefs and their human-caused destruction. Like real coral reefs, the installation evolved slowly, as a mass collaboration. Over 3,000 people took part in creating Helsinki Satellite Reef, the latest addition to the Crochet Coral Reef project that Margaret and Christine Wertheim have been working on with communities all over the world.

When we were almost walked around the island, I got a shocking phone call from the hospital: There is a metastasis in my skeleton. It took awhile, before we were able to continue walking again. A life changing moment.
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In the evening we met our goddaughter Ilona; we had a dinner at the restaurant Pontus and dessert at the restaurant Carousel.


+23 C,sunny