The question of belonging
Express interview with a curator Saara Hacklin about the exhibition Feels Like Home at the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma (Helsinki)
Feels Like Home exhibition (12.1.2024–12.1.2025) reflects on the theme of home and belonging through contemporary art. Belonging is linked to identity – to who we are and where we come from. The featured artworks show that home can be a physical place, a community, or a state of mind. Home can also be found in a language or culture.
“But how does it feel not to belong? The exhibition shares experiences of how it feels when home is lost or far away, whether by choice or force of circumstance. War and exile can sever ties with loved ones and beloved places. Loss and longing can be passed down through generations. As the artworks show, individual experiences are intertwined with social change and broader historical events. Home and belonging are important topics of discussion in today’s Finland. Many of us are touched on a personal level by migrations and diasporic transitions. Finland has grown more diverse, and Finnish artists, too, come from a growing variety of cultural backgrounds. A museum is a place for coming together and understanding each other, and art can offer a means of understanding the past and imagining the future", the curator's text tells us.
The artworks featured in this exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma are from the collections of the Finnish National Gallery. The exhibition has been curated by Kiasma curators Saara Hacklin, Satu Oksanen and Saara Karhunen. We contacted one of curators, Saara Hacklin, to find out more about concept of the exhibition and meanings of this theme for Finnish society.
Kalervo Palsa, Cold Room, 1974. Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Petri Virtanen
How do the curators of the exhibition understand the term “home”? What does “home” mean to us now? Is it the planet, the country, a few rooms, our memories?
Saara Hacklin: The Feels Like Home exhibition has its starting point in the question of belonging: the curators Saara Karhunen and Satu Oksanen and I were interested in considering the questions of: Where do I belong? What creates a sense of belonging? And what happens when one feels there is a tension between the surrounding world and the self? So, it is clear in the context of the exhibition that the theme of home is interpreted in a very broad sense. Yes, home can be a physical place – it can be a few rooms or the Earth – but it can also be something else: it can be a group of people, or something immaterial and metaphorical. And yes, home can exist in our memories, as you suggest.
Kaarlo Stauffer. Unttitled. 2014. Finnish National Gallery. Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Pirje Mykkänen
Is there a sense of “home”, of belonging that is particularly expressed in the works of Finnish artists? Or perhaps more broadly – artists from the Northern countries?
SH: This is a difficult question, and the short answer is: No. But the long answer is that there are themes that are related specifically to the Nordic countries and Finland. To give you a few examples: Titta Aaltonen’s participatory artwork My name (2017) is about people whose family names have been changed. The work has a historical reference point in the moment when people wanted to change their surnames – many of them originally Swedish – to Finnish-sounding ones. Yet, this phenomenon is in many ways, widely recognisable: changing of names happens everywhere and, of course, for various reasons, but one motivation can be the wish to blend in with the surrounding society.
There are also works that are specifically Nordic: we are showing Jouni S. Laiti’s and Olof Marsja’s works that both draw on their Sápmi background. For Laiti the practice of duodji is a starting point – its principles drawing on a specific relationship with the land and materials – while, in recent years, he has actively taken his practice into the domain of contemporary art. Marsja’s works are a mixture of different materials, from reindeer fur to a cargo strap. Marsja speaks about ununified identities – this I guess is also something that is very recognizable to many people. Who is only one or a complete whole?
In general, our collection exhibition features artworks that open out into very personal histories that are of larger societal significance. Henna Hyvärinen’s Pussycat Soup (2022) is a video piece in which the artist has a conversation with her mother about the Livvi Karelian language that her mother’s family used to speak. Hyvärinen’s piece takes up the topic of the evacuee, a traumatic subject, but here addressed from the perspective of a new generation. The story of a place left behind is also present in several other works, such as Azar Saiyar’s Monument of Distance (2018) and Ahmed Al-Nawas' Hostis (2021).
Maarit Hohteri. Paula and Miro. Kuopio, 1999. Detail. Photo: Finnish National Gallery 
Feeling yourself at home, feeling of belonging is undoubtedly a warm and emotional subject. Why was it chosen now? Is it in some way against the backdrop of a global geopolitical crisis and news that often brings no joy?
SH: Collection exhibitions are always huge projects that are planned well in advance. Certainly, the idea of addressing the subject of home had its roots in responding to something that was happening both in the world and specifically in Finland. The first steps towards Feels Like Home were in the air over two years ago, as we started to realise that Kiasma had acquired several new pieces that dealt with personal histories that included immigration or addressed the question of belonging to a place or culture. Later on, the concept grew larger, approaching different aspects of home – we had all been sitting at home quite a lot during Covid-19.
And yes, we have also included works that can bring joy and comfort in difficult times: there are series of watercolours and etchings by Marjatta Hanhijoki, who depicts those close to her, and Niina Lehtonen Braun’s works from the Mother Said series, in which she has collected teachings from mothers and created collages out of them – these are often quite fun, sometimes absurd. The most recent addition to the exhibition was a video piece by Samira Elagoz and Z Walsh, You can’t get what you want but you can get me (2023), which is a very moving love story.
One work that hopefully will channel negative emotions into positive ones is the participatory artwork by Tellervo Kalleinen and Oliver Kochta Kalleinen: Complaints Choir was acquired for the collection from Kiasma’s ARS 06 exhibition in 2006. We are now showing the videos of choirs in different cities complaining. During the spring, our museum will organise a new choir, which people can join to complain and sing together. Let’s see if there are many new subjects to complain about!
Tellervo Kalleinen and Oliver Kochta Kalleinen. Complaints Choir. 2006. Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Sanna Ikäläinen
Are there any media that are particularly suitable for expressing this subject?
SH: Again, the question is a tricky one, and it is tempting give a simple No. However, looking at the exhibition we have compiled, it is quite clear that we are showing quite many videos. In addition, even though medium specificity has not been a driving force in our curatorial process, there are some material conditions that need to be dealt with and which in turn affect the list of artworks: The long exhibition period poses challenges for the paper-based collection pieces. With some exceptions there are several paper-based pieces that will be changed during the show to protect them from exposure to light. In this collection exhibition quite many changes will happen midway – hopefully many of our visitors will see the show several times! To name some of the changes: Hertta Kiiski’s photography installation Primeval Soup Altar (2021) – a kind of speculative history of the origins of life – will be replaced by Susanna Majuri’s Triptych (2015), a dream-like otherworldly scenery. Kalervo Palsa’s iconic paintings from Kittilä will also be replaced by Veli Granö’s photo portraits.
Hertta Kiiski. Primeval Soup Altar. 2021. Finnish National Gallery. Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Pirje Mykkänen
The exhibition includes performative works and even an online game. Could you tell us more about them and about their mission in the overall structure of the project?
SH: Our museum has been commissioning works directly for the collections for about ten years now. For us, commissions open up a beautiful possibility for working with artists for a specific context. Both of the commissions made for Feels Like Home also challenge the very idea of a collectable work: What can be collected? Essi Kausalainen is an artist working with performance, who often collaborates with non-professionals. For us, this commission was a shift that opens up the question of the museum: this building is a home for art, and it is also a workplace for museum guards, who are the ones sharing their time with the artworks and the audience. In Kausalainen’s piece They Whistled and Walked from Room to Room (2024) the guards can – if they so choose, this is entirely voluntary – interact with textiles and objects that the artist has prepared after interviewing and holding a workshop with our museum guards. This piece will remain in our collection for the future via the objects, the artist’s instructions, and our guards’ observations.
Another topic approached through the commission is reflecting people’s presence in the virtual world. For many people, “home” is accessed through screens and found in virtual communities. We invited the artist Joonas Hyvönen to create a video game for us. His piece Mehen (2024) has its starting point in an Ancient Egyptian board game – in it you have to navigate the underworld – but its reference is clearly contemporary, in the world of social media and the different accounts that we create and abandon. Through Hyvönen’s piece the exhibition addresses the question of virtual communities and the digital world, a theme that is also visible in Jaakko Pietiläinen’s and Otto Byström’s artworks in the physical exhibition space.
Title image: Marjatta Hanhijoki. Leena in the Sunroom. 1988. Finnish National Gallery. Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Petri Virtanen
