The Girl Who Turned into a Rosebush

A fresh dialogue between older and newer works in the Helsinki art collection highlights many topical themes, from gender to embodiment.

The Girl Who Turned into a Rosebush reflects on practices of seeing and presenting. The exhibition is structured around five themes: Habitus, Gaze, The Intimate, Body, and Still Life & Landscape, based on a pick of works from the Leonard and Katarina Bäcksbacka Collection, which forms the core of HAM’s art collections. In addition to the Bäcksbacka Collection the exhibition features contemporary art from HAM collection and a few private loans.

The close reading of the works draws attention to the often seemingly irrelevant details of the images. The exhibition builds on the connections between these details, between recent and older works in different media. The juxtapositions expose the works to new ways of looking at them. The different pairs of counterparts and opposites open up possibilities for new interpretations.

The meanings once created by the viewer may also change during the exhibition, when some of the delicate paper-based works will be exchanged in May. The exhibition features works by Louise Bourgeois, Shia Conlon, Erik Creutziger, Magnus Enckell, Emma Helle, Heikki Marila, Ana Mendieta, Dennis Oppenheim, Jalmari Ruokokoski, Vidha Saumya, Joel Slotte, Salla Tykkä, Hannah Wilke and others.

The exhibition is curated by Asta Kihlman, PhD.

HAM Helsinki

9.2.-29.9.2024

Admission fee 0-18€