Tor Arne, Jani Hänninen, Elina Merenmies and Mari Sunna at HAM

Tor Arne, Jani Hänninen, Elina Merenmies and Mari Sunna are featured in the newly opened Free Art School’s 90th anniversary exhibition at HAM Helsinki Art Museum. The exhibition presents the school’s 90-year history and its significance in the development of Finnish painting and modernism. Vapaa 90 (Free 90) is curated by Timo Valjakka and Satu Metsola, and features 60 artworks by 39 artists.

The Free Art School was founded in 1935 on the initiative of Maire Gullichsen to offer an alternative to academic art education. Modelled after the “free academies” of Paris, the Free Art School was a champion of modern painting in Finland from its very beginning. The history of the Free Art School and the artists who studied and taught there are approached through Leonard and Katarina Bäcksbacka’s collection, donated to the HAM and the City of Helsinki’s art collection.

The exhibition runs until 4 January 2026.

Image: Tor Arne, Painting (from the series Reconvalescentia), 1993. Photo: HAM/Hanna Kukorelli

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Jani Ruscica in Vilnius

Jani Ruscica is participating in the group exhibition Braking the Joints at Sapieha Palace in Vilnius, Lithuania. The recently opened exhibition runs until 31 December 2025. On view are Ruscica’s video piece Polynotknot and a new window painting A Companion piece (purple move) spanning across three of the Sapieha Palace’s grand windows.

Breaking the Joints is a group exhibition and event programme that considers the status of the body within the history of animation, elaborating on the essential concepts of cartoons, while also examining what these modes of world-building can tell us about our world today. In their works, the exhibited artists draw from and critically deploy animated tropes and techniques to address bodily anxieties and material relationships, media and trauma. The exhibition considers a tension at the heart of animation: between animation as a narrative of liberation, metamorphosis, and transformation, and animation as a cyclical mechanised disciplining of the body full of violence and bittersweet gags.

Photo: Jani Ruscica

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Mari Sunna at Villa Gyllenberg in Helsinki

Mari Sunna is among the fifteen artist presented in a group exhibition titled Morbus. The exhibition, curated by Magdalena Åberg, opens 2 April and runs until 21 September at Villa Gyllenberg, Helsinki.

Morbus (Latin: disease, illness) explores the theme of illness and getting sick. How do we relate to the body and illness in our performance-oriented and health-obsessed culture, where fear illness and the decay of the body? We believe we can control our bodies, and we strive for unrealistic physical perfection. The body and our health have become a life-filling project where there is no room for reflection on vulnerability and mortality. The fragility and inadequacy that are components of being sick remind us of our mortality and foster compassion for one another. The works presented in the exhibition ponder whether we can also find beauty inside our body, even in its illness.

Image: Mari Sunna, Pray, 2012, oil on canvas, 35 x 30 cm

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