Helsinki - A Love for Kiasma 💖🎨

The Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art, part of the National Gallery, unexpectedly became my favorite stop. The architecture and spatial design won my heart, and upon further investigation, I found out it's the work of Steven Holl. 🏛️✨ One of the most memorable exhibitions was by artist Simon Fujiwara, a British-Japanese artist I had never heard of before. His work is strongly autobiographical, exploring identity and gender. At first glance, it's not easy to grasp the exhibition's logic and ideas: blur and fiction, two-dimensional and three-dimensional, collage and installation... Plus his created cartoon character Bæ interwoven throughout, the "chaotic" approach and seemingly "flat" expression, it's only after almost finishing the viewing that one can understand Simon Fujiwara's effort to find his real self in the world of images. 🖼️🧩 Female artist Henrietta Lehtonen's artistic expression is quite ingenious, with a very down-to-earth philosophy: perfect blue and white porcelain, but upon closer inspection, it's full of fingerprints and smudges. Behind seemingly safe, familiar, and beautiful things, there are too many surprises hidden. This work is part of the exhibition themed "Feels like home," and it feels like this year's Venice Biennale "Foreigners Everywhere" is far inferior in comparison. Although both explore the themes of foreigners and a sense of belonging, the Biennale seems incredibly clichéd, like a badly done essay on a given topic. 🤔🖌️ Thinking back to a conversation with an Italian friend about the Biennale, she agreed with the politically correct theme but also helplessly exclaimed, "Ma basta!" 🤷‍♀️🗣️ #LetsExploreTheWorld #Nordic #Helsinki #ArtAndDesign