Galerie Anhava

“The exhibition is full of cracks and openings that let us move in and out of the Nordic. All the artists are from the Nordic region or connected to it. They have a global outlook and allow us to see their own cultures from the inside. They are rooted in the present while carrying history with them. Issues of identity and power, welfare and consumption, nature and climate are among the themes that engage them.”

55.6° North opens 5 February and runs until 30 August 2026.

Image: Elina Merenmies, Party Animal, 2002, ink on paper, 24 x 32 cm

Noora Schroderus embroiders the names of dogs with their own hair, drawing a wry and poignant analogy that questions how humans understand their relationships with other nonhuman beings. Using actual dog fur, her embroidery works become intimate portraits of companionship and co-existence. In contrast with this intensely bound connection, Päivi Takala’s paintings adopt a quieter, more contemplative approach to human-animal connections. Her recurring motifs, such as depictions of horses and birds, meditate on the nature of that intimacy between species, but also on the unbridgeable expanse that separates them.

The exhibition, running until 21 February, is co-organized with The Finnish Cultural Institute in New York and the Consulate General of Finland in New York through their partnership with the New Art Dealers Alliance, with support of a grant by Jane and Aatos Erkko Foundation, Finlandia Foundation National, and The Ministry of Education and Culture in Finland.
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Image: Installation view

Tykkä’s video piece The Will (2024) is built from images and sounds gathered through an ongoing process of observation. The film traces the formation of value, illuminating the trajectories that connect family and home, entrepreneurship and labor. The photographic works Contact 1–3 (2024) is made up of multiple film frames that challenge the notion of accidental observation. The contact prints reveal the subjective and ideological nature of vision, exposing the artist’s choices and point of view at the moment the image is taken.

The exhibition underscores how, for Tykkä, the image is everything. It is the privileged site where a process of identification takes shape, one that activates remote memory and, with it, recollections, fantasies, dreams, and fears. The value attributed to images ultimately shapes history. For this reason, Tykkä weaves personal experience together with a collective dimension, addressing socio-political questions and generating shared metaphors that reflect on the mechanisms of both external and internal social control.

Image: Salla Tykkä, Contact 2, 2024, C-Print, mounted on aluminium composite, museum glass, 101,5 x 75,5 cm

“The works follow neither a logic of either/or nor an impulse toward reconciliation. Instead, they allow contradictory sensations to remain side by side, pointing to an underlying existential unease and to the fragmentary nature of perception itself – always situational, always shaped by sentiment.”

The exhibition runs until 28 February.
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Image: Anna Tuori, Off on an Adventure, 2025, acrylic and oil on canvas, 140 x 120 cm