The first section of the Saastamoinen Foundation’s collection exhibition is on view at EMMA – Espoo Museum of Modern Art until 21 January. Opened in phases, the 100-work exhibition consists of three distinct sections and was completed in autumn 2025. Works from the first section will be gradually removed over the coming weeks to make way for the exhibition In Search of the Present, opening in March.
Rashaad Newsome, Untitled (New Way), 2009. On the background: Henni Alftan, Outside, Déjà-vu, 2019 ja Emma Jääskeläinen, Night Studio, 2021. Dialogues, Saastamoinen Foundation Art Collection / EMMA – Espoo Museum of Modern Art © Paula Virta / EMMA
The Dialogues exhibition presenting the Foundation’s art collection is based on a dialogue between artworks, encouraging visitors to reflect on the various relationships between them. The exhibition invites viewers to consider the works in relation to one another and to create different parallels between them.
Based on open dialogue between artworks, the Dialogues exhibition presents the Saastamoinen Foundation’s art collection at EMMA through regularly updated displays. The first section of the exhibition opened in 2023. The second section opened in 2024, and the third in autumn 2025. The second and third sections will remain on view at EMMA until autumn 2026.
In the first section, which opened in 2023, works placed in dialogue include Leena Luostarinen’s painting Nefertiti in the Garden of Fragrances (1998) and Rasheed Araeen’s sculpture Chaar Pellay (1968–2017). One of the highlights of the display is Rashaad Newsome’s Untitled (New Way) (2009). Newsome’s silent media work is sculptural, almost like a spatial drawing, paying homage to the cultural specificity and virtuosity of vogue dance.
Mohamed Bourouissa: The Genealogy of Violence, 2024. Video still. Saastamoisen Foundation Art Collection. © Mohamed Bouroissa ADAGP, Divioson.
The artists featured in the first section include internationally renowned names rarely seen in Finland, alongside pioneering Finnish artists. The exhibition features work by the following artists:
Henni Alftan, Rasheed Araeen, Jesse Darling, A K Dolven, Giorgio Griffa, Åsa Hellman, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Roni Horn, Emma Jääskeläinen, Lucy McKenzie, Olli Keränen, Christine Sun Kim, Lee Lozano, Leena Luostarinen, Sandra Mujinga, Rashaad Newsome, Berenice Olmedo, Sini Pelkki, Silja Rantanen, Maja Ruznic, Kain Tapper, Rose Wylie, and Haegue Yang.
In the media space of the Saastamoinen Foundation’s collection exhibition, Mohamed Bourouissa’s (b. 1978) short film The Genealogy of Violence is on view. Considered one of the most significant French artists of his generation, Bourouissa often addresses social issues and the experiences of immigrants in his video and photographic works. The Genealogy of Violence is set in an ordinary French suburb, where a young French couple’s conversation about their future is abruptly cut off by a police raid. The work can be viewed at EMMA until 22 March 2026.
