HELSINKI.- Kiasma is to stage an exhibition by one of Britain’s most important contemporary artists, Sarah Lucas. This is the first solo show in the Nordic countries by this member of the renowned Young British Artists movement. Also in 2025, Kiasma will host an exhibition by Monira al Qadiri, the main theme being oil and humanity’s complex relationship with this raw material that has become such a burning issue. There will be solo exhibitions by Finnish contemporary artists Dafna Maimon and Essi Kuokkanen. Kiasma’s new collection exhibition opens in February.

Rock, paper, scissors – Kiasma’s Collection Exhibition
14.2.2025–18.1.2026

Why does contemporary art look the way it does? You can wonder about this fundamental question in art at Kiasma’s new collection exhibition, which reveals the evocative spectrum of materials used in contemporary artworks, where layers of paint fold like fabric, optical fibre forms a lacey blanket, and clothes resembling national costumes are made out of plastic bags.

The exhibition has been compiled from the Finnish National Gallery collections, with items dating from the 1970s to the present. In these selected works, the material is a key part of the content. They highlight the way that contemporary art changes with society. Artists’ use of materials reflects changes in the culture and developments ranging from greater environmental awareness to digitalisation and the growing popularity of handicrafts. Classic works of contemporary art, such as Jacob Dahlgren’s The Wonderful World of Abstraction (2009) and Maria Duncker’s National Costumes IV (1998), form the cornerstones of the exhibition.

Monira Al Qadiri
21.3.–7.9.2025

Monira Al Qadiri (b. 1983) grew up in Kuwait, amid oil refineries and oil fields. Her childhood memories of petro-culture in the Persian Gulf region have influenced her art, where oil is a source not only of planetary crisis, but also of wealth. The exhibition will let us ponder our complex relationship with petroleum, for example, while walking under giant petrochemical-derived molecules floating in the air or while watching huge drill bits slowly spinning in place. These visually captivating works glow with rainbow colours like patches of oil or glistening pearls. Pearl diving was a major source of livelihood in the region before the oil boom.

Monira Al Qadiri is one of the most important contemporary artists in the Gulf region. She was born in Senegal, grew up in Kuwait, and studied in Japan. Currently, she lives and works in Germany.

Dafna Maimon
25.4.–21.9.2025

In her art, Dafna Maimon (b. 1982) portrays the modern individual struggling with society’s expectations, a complicated relationship with food, and a lost sense of community. Our bodies try to communicate their needs to us, for example, through pain. Do we hear those messages?

The Porvoo-born, Berlin-resident Maimon’s works are often performative and cinematic. She takes a gently humorous view of the protagonists of her works, who are not just rational actors, but guided by their emotions. Besides three video installations, the exhibition features a large number of drawings and paintings. One of the installations has been produced specifically for the Kiasma exhibition. Also as part of this, Maimon is creating a participatory musical to be performed in Kiasma Theatre. Maimon is on a residency in Ekenäs until 2025 as part of Pro Artibus’ programme.

Sarah Lucas
10.10.2025–

Over the course of three decades, Sarah Lucas (b. 1962, London) has become recognised as one of Britain’s most significant contemporary artists. Spanning sculpture, photography and installation, her work has consistently been characterised by irreverent humour and the use of everyday ‘readymade' objects – furniture, food, tabloid newspapers, tights, toilets, cigarettes – to conjure up corporeal fragments. The body – in its many guises – is Lucas’s prevailing subject.

In the 1990s she placed herself at the heart of her work in a series of photographic self-portraits. These images’ disarming mixture of vulnerability and attitudinising set the double-edged tone of much of the artist’s subsequent work.

Essi Kuokkanen
10.10.2025–

In Essi Kuokkanen’s (b. 1991) paintings, the thoughts and feelings that swirl around in our subconscious take physical form. Here, everything is connected in a dreamlike way, the boundaries between species are blurred, the inanimate comes to life, and living beings split into pieces. In addition to people and animals, other creatures make an appearance in the artworks, such as a teary-eyed banana or a heavy cloud. At times, a sadness emerges beneath the apparently carefree surface.

Kuokkanen lives and works in Helsinki. The artist describes her method of working as circular motion, in which images, painting, and naming the piece blend together to form something new.