In March 2025, it was announced that Finland had topped the World Happiness Rankings for the eighth year running. As well as social security, a carefully protected work-life balance and a focus on community living, many residents put this enduring contentment down to time outdoors. Finland’s capital, Helsinki, is made up of 40% green spaces, whilst beyond the city limits, the country is awash with 190,000 lakes, 76,000 islands and almost endless forests. It is not surprising, then, that Helsinki Biennial takes an optimistic approach to ecological activism and conservation, inviting visitors to reconnect with nature.
For 2025, Helsinki’s landscape becomes part of the artwork, with the biennial’s curators describing it as a “protagonist.” Vallisaari Island, just a 15-minute ferry ride from the mainland, is a former military base. It’s had a protected status for decades, keeping it entirely preserved from residential dwellings. Visitors are encouraged to move through the island, engaging with its wild sights and sounds. This is an ambitious premise, but it demonstrates how human and nonhuman stories interconnect.
Even throughout the biennial’s more conventional displays, exhibiting artists are responding to their natural surroundings. Kati Roover’s video installation, Songs in the Ocean, looks at the link between people and whales, Meanwhile, Olafur Eliasson’s kaleidoscopic Viewing Machine urges observers to reinterpret what they see in novel ways. The Helsinki Biennial 2025 intertwines art and ecology, sparking a hopeful vision for a future where humans and the environment can thrive together.
Helsinki Biennial 2025 runs until 21 September: helsinkibiennaali.fi
Words: Emma Jacob
Image Credits:
1. Olafur Eliasson Viewing machine, 2001-2003. Installation view, Inhotim, CACI, Brumadinho, Brazil, 2010. Photo Jochen Volz.
2. Keiken, Ãngel Yåkai Atå, 2023. Courtesy of HAM, Helsinki Biennial and Kirsi Halkola.
3. Nomeda & Gediminas Urbonas Futurity island, 2018-25, detail. Helsinki Biennial, 2025, Vallisaari Island. Courtesy of Blackwood Gallery. Photo HAM.
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