Helsinki Biennial 2025, HAM Helsinki Art Museum, Helsinki
8.06. — 21.09.2025
The installation in HAM’s north gallery consists of ceramic sculptures and four wool pile tapestries handmade by the artist and her associates from woollen yarns dyed with Estonian plants. ‘Külmking’ is a mythological figure believed to be the protector of forests and peatlands in Estonian folklore. The wool pile tapestries on the wall depict a faceless figure in cowboy boots intertwined with the sinuous branches of a rose bush and a lithe female figure. The shapes of the ceramic sculptures reiterate the thorny forms of the tapestries. The sculptures laid out on the hand-tufted tapestry are suggestive of rugged, mossy terrain and the twisting roots of northern woodlands. Intersecting softness with hardness, Põld’s installation evokes life’s unpredictability and reminds us of our responsibility to protect those who are most vulnerable.
The third Helsinki Biennial, titled “Shelter: Below and Beyond, Becoming and Belonging,” seeks to shake us out of anthropocentrism in order to better understand the delicate and severely imbalanced relationship between humankind and nature. The curatorial concept questions human dominance by foregrounding non-human actors such as plants, animals, fungi, elements, and minerals. Curators Blanca de la Torre and Kati Kivinen believe that this shift in perspective can foster new awareness and compassion for other living beings. By displacing the anthropocentric gaze, the Biennial aims to uncover a plurality of ways to sense and mediate experiences that embrace the ecosystem.
Photos by HAM/Helsinki Biennial/Sonja Hyytiäinen and by Albert Kerstna
