Antti Laitinen: Chiming Forest

Antti Laitinen (b. 1975) is an artist based in Somero, Finland, who makes art from materials drawn from his immediate surroundings. In recent years, he has focused on transforming, dismantling and reassembling trees and forest landscapes in his work.

Chiming Forest (2025) is a kinetic installation – an artwork involving movement – that invites us to consider humanity’s capacity and means to shape the natural world. The work is constructed from wood sourced throughout southern Finland, including brushwood left behind in logged areas and root systems of trees felled by wind. These fragments of trees are reassembled into new, hybrid forms and arranged into a forest-like composition – an artificial landscape animated by mechanically produced motion and sound.

Moving image

Moving image is one of the focus areas of the Saastamoinen Foundation Art Collection strategy. Works of moving image are presented at EMMA as part of the Saastamoinen Foundation Collection Exhibition, as well as in a room designed specifically for showcasing media art. In 2025, this space will feature two new media art acquisitions by the foundation: Dolle (2023) by Italian artist Diego Marcon, and The Genealogy of Violence (2023) by French-Algerian artist Mohamed Bourouissa. Rasheed Araeen’s work Untitled (New Way) (2009) will be on view as part of the Dialogues collection exhibition (pictured).

Dialogues

The concept of the Saastamoinen Foundation Collection exhibition at EMMA is evolving. The first part of the Dialogues exhibition opened to the public in 2023 and the second part in 2024. Dialogues is based on dialogue between artworks and is curated mainly from the Foundation’s recent acquisitions. The exhibition concept continues the collaboration between the Saastamoinen Foundation and EMMA, showcasing the diversity of one of Finland’s most significant art collections.