Helsinki Biennale: New North Star

Helsinki. For its third edition, the Helsinki Biennale brings together 37 artists and collective: international stars, like Yayoi Kusama, and talents from northern and elsewhere. Among the most established artists, we also find Giuseppe Penone, Ernesto Neto and ólafur Elíasson, who all created outdoor installations. Elíasson thus created two works of which Long Daylight Pavilion (Pavilion of the long day light)a monumental and permanent light installation, which follows the movement of the sun over the seasons according to the latitude of Helsinki. Strandings (strandings, 2025), series of sculptures by Sara Bjarland, bronze casts of buoys in the shape of dolphins and turtles, lying down half the rocky banks of Vallisaari, will also remain in Helsinki after the Biennale, an interesting choice to perpetuate its heritage. Bjarland is not the only Nordic revelation: Tidal Tears (tidal tears, 2025), immersive, visual and sound installation of Hans Rosenström is particularly successful. Corporated in a small clearing of the island, it invites visitors to splashing around totems formed by petrified trees, animated by the runoff of fountains and by choirs diffused through the leaves. Everything magnifies the artistic experience in a communion with nature and its elements.

Art in the face of nature and the future

The Biennale thus explores man’s relationships with nature and other living beings. Entitled “Shelter (shelter)”, it was designed by Blanca de la Torre, new director of the Valencià Institute of Modern Art (IVAM), and Kati Kivinen, curator at Helsinki Art Museum (HAM). The latter constitutes one of the three sites of the demonstration, with the esplanade, green flow in the heart of the capital, and the island of Vallisaari, accessible in twenty minutes by boat from the city center. The inclusion of this island gives the Biennale increased legitimacy to approach ecology from an artistic point of view. Uninhabited since 1996 and closed to the public until 2016, nature has resumed its rights. Former military site with numerous fortifications and armament storage areas, Vallisaari also symbolizes, in its own way, the passage of hard At soft power. Concerned about the ecological anchoring of the Biennale, the two commissioners have watched over the limitation of its carbon footprint and preserve the biotope of local species, while developing an optimistic approach to ecological issues, focusing on the saving power of art to envisage a better future. They thus stood out from a geopolitical reading that the theme could have integrated, especially since the Russo-Finlandaise border is only 200 km from Helsinki. This counterpoint to ambient eco-anxiety and pessimism underlines, in filigree, that Finland is regularly at the top of the classification of the happiest countries in the world.

With more than 300 biennials identified in the world, including 136 in Europe, it is undeniably difficult to stand out. The success of the Helsinki biennial is therefore remarkable: in just three editions, it manages to partially eclipse its Nordic elders – Baltic Triennale, Kaunas Biennial, International Contemporary Art Biennale of Gothenburg (GIBCA), Momentum, among others. To do this, it benefits from strong synergies with the other artistic institutions of the capital (Kiasma, Ateneum and Amos Rex in particular), which worked in concert with the Helsinki Art Museum, the main organizer of the event. In addition to the positive image of Finland internationally (natural landscapes, homeland of the sauna, innovation in design and architecture, pioneer in sustainable development and pedagogy), Helsinki also benefits from its strategic position at the crossroads of the Scandinavian countries, Balts and Slavs. This situation had also attracted the attention of the Guggenheim, of which a project of establishment in the city was under study between 2011 and 2016.