Becoming Many
March—April 2025, Myymala 2, Helsinki
Becoming Many presented an intergenerational reflection on the many ways we are undone, made, and remade by each other. The works of eleven artists came together to reflect on how our lives aren’t just our individual lives, but deeply weaved with the lives of others.
Few experiences are as radically grounding and at once capable of shaking our ground as the experience of caring for others in our everyday, sustaining a life, listening to them with our heart, being there with our entire being, or trying to be, despite strains, complex circumstances or competing desires. Kinship, chosen or not, has the power to shape who we are in ways we may not suspect, to split us apart, give us unexpected courage and resilience, but also can drain us physically and emotionally to the very last reserve. It can be as fulfilling and generous as it is demanding. Kinship changes us over time in such fundamental ways that if those “many” we become were to be extracted from the picture of who we are, we might not be able to recognize ourselves.
”… perhaps we make a mistake if we take the definitions of who we are, legally, to be adequate descriptions of what we are about. Although this language might well establish our legitimacy within a legal framework ensconced in liberal versions of human ontology, it fails to do justice to passion and grief and rage, all of which tear us from ourselves, bind us to others, transport us, undo us, and implicate us in lives that are not our own, sometimes fatally, irreversibly.” J. Butler, Undoing Gender, 2004
As an exhibition, Becoming Many intended to bounce between the personal, the political, and the collective; it reflected on the constant challenges and (often invisible) negotiations we enter when caring for others—be them our elders, children, or dependent adults in our families, whether biological or chosen—while wanting to thrive as art and culture workers. Artistic methods and practices brought different perspectives to the exhibition to share personal experiences, positionalities, and stories of caregiving, parenthood, intergenerational bonds, reproductive labor, insane practical juggling of tasks, and deep reckonings with love and friendship. We asked: how do kinship and responsibility for others shape our life and vision of the world? And how do they affect other aspects of our identity? We also investigated the overlaps between artistic life and issues of ability, vulnerability, migration, norms, artistic and professional precarity, activism, and interdependence.
The exhibition featured works by artists working across a spectrum of these issues, from different ages and positionalities based in Finland, Mexico and Spain. It included both traditional mediums like painting, photography and drawing, video installation, ceramics, writings, an art book, two performances and a participatory textile installation.
With works by: Christian Fernandez Miron, Diana Soria Hernandez, Eevi Tolvanen + Jussi Ulkuniemi, Ida Nisonen, Keme, Lotta Esko, Maryam Haji, Minna Suoniemi, and Orlan Ohtonen + Niko Wearden.