ALICJA KWADE
HELSINKI BIENNIAL 2021

HELSINKI BIENNIAL, HELSINKI, FINLAND
12 JUNE – 26 SEPTEMBER 2021

Helsinki Biennial is an international art event that brings outstanding contemporary art to maritime Helsinki. The first Helsinki Biennial was held in the unique surroundings of Vallisaari Island and presented 41 international artists or groups of artists from both Finland and around the world.
Two stones sit on either side of a steel sheet with two-sided reflective surfaces. One stone is a real rock; the other is its metallic mirror image in Alicja Kwade’s Big Be-Hide. The artist selected a partially submerged boulder at the southern end of a neck of land between Vallisaari and Kuninkaansaari. The location – on a strip of land dividing the bay from the open sea – similarly reflects on the different-versus-identical theme. The round objects on the rocky shore look as if they had landed there accidentally, like scattered billiard balls. Pars Pro Toto consists of eight different-sized stone globes resembling the planets of our solar system. The natural stones come from the various continents of our Earth and also symbolize them. Typically for Kwade, the work plays with scale and signification, inviting us to contextualize our existence and problems in relation to the vast scale of the universe.

After the Helsinki Biennial, the work will be placed on permanent display as a public artwork in the Helsinki neighborhood of Kalasatama.

© Images Maija Toivanen

FEATURED ARTIST

ALICJA KWADE
Alicja Kwade (b. 1979 in Katowice, Poland) lives and works in Berlin. Her work investigates and questions universally accepted notions of space, time, science, and philosophy by breaking down frames of perception in her work. Kwade’s multifaceted practice spans sculpture, public installation, works on paper, videos, and photography.

Most recently, she has exhibited in the following museums, among others: Lehmbruck Museum, Duisburg; Berlinische Galerie – Landesmuseum für Moderne Kunst, Berlin, Germany; Langen Foundation, Neuss, Germany; MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, USA; Dallas Contemporary, Dallas, USA; Espoo Museum of Mod...
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