Espoo Museum of Modern Art
Alien in Me celebrates 20 Years of Saastamoinen Foundation Collection Exhibitions at EMMA
What can the unfamiliar reveal about ourselves and our surroundings? Alien in Me, a new presentation of Saastamoinen Foundation Art Collection at EMMA – Espoo Museum of Modern Art, brings together works by over 50 artists to explore experiences of alienation and otherness in a world undergoing constant transformation. Curated by EMMA Director Krist Gruijthuijsen, the exhibition includes Finnish and international names such as Eija-Liisa Ahtila, Louise Bourgeois, Peter Hujar, Isaac Julien, Nnena Kalu, Cindy Sherman, Jenna Sutela and Gillian Wearing. The exhibition opens on 23 October 2026, marking 20 years of collaboration between EMMA and its founding partner, Saastamoinen Foundation.
Alien in Me refers to the unfamiliar both within ourselves and in the world around us. Something familiar can become strange when our circumstances change, when we move between places or cultures, or when our understanding of ourselves begins to shift. Throughout the exhibition, artists question familiar boundaries between self and other, human and non-human, body and technology. Rather than seeing the unfamiliar only as something that creates distance, the exhibition invites us to reflect whether it can open new ways of understanding ourselves and the world we share.
These questions unfold through very different artistic approaches. In Eija-Liisa Ahtila’s Potentiality for Love (2018), encounters between humans and other species raise questions about how far our capacity for empathy can extend. Louise Bourgeois’s The Maternal Man (1998) unsettles conventional distinctions between masculine and feminine, while Isaac Julien’s Paradise Omeros (2002), interweaves experiences of migration, memory and belonging. In Me as Pier Paolo Pasolini (2024), Gillian Wearing transforms herself into the Italian filmmaker, exploring how identity is shaped through representation, memory and the gaze of others.
Saastamoinen Foundation Art Collection has been presented at EMMA through continuously evolving collection exhibitions since the museum opened in 2006. Alien in Me marks a new chapter with a new curatorial whole taking over the entire collection space. Krist Gruijthuijsen’s first exhibition drawn from the collection brings works from different generations, cultural contexts and artistic practices into new relationships, combining recent acquisitions with longstanding works from the collection and several works that are being shown at EMMA for the first time.
Alien in Me is part of EMMA’s 20th anniversary programme and continues a partnership that has shaped the museum since it opened in 2006. The first EMMA-Saastamoinen Curatorial Fellow Shohreh Shakoory did research for the exhibition and wrote an essay On Being-With the World: Relational Curating as Practice published on EMMA Zone.
Artists: Eija-Liisa Ahtila, Olga Balema, Ericka Beckman, Louise Bourgeois, Sonia Boyce, Stefan Bremer, Benjamin de Burca & Bárbara Wagner, Alexandru Chira, John Coplans, Tony Cragg, Filippo de Pisis, Johanna Ehrnrooth, Antony Gormley, Kaisaleena Halinen, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Peter Hujar, Ismo Hölttö, Teija & Pekka Isorättyä, Chantal Joffe, Isaac Julien, Jan Kaila, Nnena Kalu, Dzamil Kamanger, Aimo Kanerva, Edward Kienholz, Jürgen Klauke, Ella Kruglyanskaya, Liisa Lounila, Lee Lozano, Leena Luostarinen, Ana Lupaș, Annette Messager, Boris Mikhailov, Arno Rafael Minkkinen, Sarah Morris, Paulina Ołowska, Meret Oppenheim, Wong Ping, Joanna Piotrowska, Josephine Pryde, Pors & Rao, Heli Rekula, Jani Ruscica, Gretta Sarfaty, Paul Mpagi Sepuya, Andres Serrano, Cindy Sherman, Dayanita Singh, P. Staff, Jenna Sutela, Gillian Wearing
