Saara Lakso: Chosen with Love

Chosen with Love tells the story of queer people’s loves, chosen families and experiences of community. 

The exhibition creates a rainbow of Finnish imagery. The works in the exhibition depict queer characters in the middle of the Finnish national landscape and inscribed in the ornaments of traditional crafts. In the works in the exhibition, Saara Lakso discusses the complex relationship with her roots and her homeland in North Karelia. The works also reflect queer people’s more general experiences of rootlessness, the longing for roots and, on the other hand, the construction of roots that look like their own.

After the leaps forward taken by equality, right-wing populist thinking has reared its head as a backlash, in whose imagery people and families who deviate from the norm do not belong to traditional Finnish life. This kind of thinking wants to see queerness as something that is not part of nature or our shared history. However, queer people have always been here; in the silent branches of every family tree and between the lines of history books.

Lakso combines oil painting and textile art in the works in the exhibition. The visual language of the works is collage-like: works painted on canvas and assembled using the patchwork technique are complemented by embroidered ornaments, the imagery of which draws from the Karelian craft tradition. Through traditional Karelian craft techniques and models, Lakso creates a new relationship with her roots.

MUU Helsinki Contemporary Art Centre

24.-28.6.2026

Tue-Fri 12.00-17.00, Sat-Sun 12.00-16.00

Free entry