Nastja Säde Rönkkö: Survival Guide for a Post-Apocalyptic Child

Start date

17.05.2024

End date

08.09.2024

Nastja Säde Rönkkö’s multimedia installation reflects on the uncertain future of our planet through media art. At the core of the work, 26 videos examine various perspectives on life in the middle of some major change: emotional and practical ways to survive catastrophes, upheavals or crises.

Nastja Säde Rönkkö: Survival Guide for a Post-Apocalyptic Child (still), 2022. Photo: Aake Kivalo.

Located in the grand arched hall at HAM, the videos share stories about the last moments of the current humanity, nature, longing, and loss. At the same time, the videos also look into love, humaneness, the future, and care.

Viewers are invited to immerse themselves in the themes by projecting them on their own emotions or contemporary global crises. How can we prepare for the unknown? What things would be worth preserving in such a situation? What knowledge and memories would we want to pass on to future generations? What would society be like after such an irreversible turning point?

A guidebook carrying the name of the exhibition will be published in connection with the exhibition, in collaboration with the artist and the Lönnström Art Museum. In addition, the exhibition at HAM will include a new thematic series of sculptures as well as a customised soundscape that ties the exhibition together. The installation was originally produced by the Lönnström Art Museum as part of the Lönnström Project initiative in autumn 2022.

The exhibition is curated by HAM’s head of exhibitions, Kati Kivinen, and curator Satu Metsola.

Nastja Säde Rönkkö (b. 1985) is an award-winning visual artist based in Helsinki. She works with a wide range of mediums, including new media, performance, community art, and text. Her art explores the foundations of humanity, power structures, social relations, and the ways of being and acting as quiet radicals in our changing society. Nastja Säde Rönkkö has been awarded Young Artist of the Year in 2019 and the Below Zero Art Prize 2023.

Survival Guide for a Post-Apocalyptic Child opens together with Who Is an Animal? in the other grand arched hall at HAM. Together, the exhibitions will provoke thoughts on the connection between all living things and the fundamental importance of empathy.

The exhibition is supported by the Finnish Heritage Agency.