Two Bold Perspectives on Existence
On October 2, 2026, Aboa Vetus Ars Nova will open two exhibitions exploring existence across different layers of time. For the first time, Liisi Beckmann’s extensive body of visual art will be presented in a Finnish museum. Alongside Beckmann’s work, Laura Dahlberg’s fragile mechanical creatures will inhabit the museum. The creatures will explore the space between the organic and the technological, the living and the constructed, the past and the future.
Liisi Beckmann – the artist behind the designer
2 October 2026–28 March 2027, 1st floor
Liisi Beckmann (1924–2004) is best known for her international career as a designer. Having spent most of her life in Italy, Beckmann was also a visionary artist whose work engaged fearlessly and playfully with humanity, femininity and sexual emancipation.
Despite the significance of her artistic practice, Beckmann’s visual art has remained relatively overlooked in Finland. Aboa Vetus Ars Nova’s exhibition is the first extensive presentation of her art in a Finnish museum. It brings to light a determined artist who forged her own path at a time when the voices of female artists were often left unheard.
The exhibition features more than a hundred works created using a wide range of techniques and materials. Beckmann’s practice echoes the spirit of Arte Povera, the Italian art movement that emerged in the 1960s and emphasised the inherent qualities and possibilities of materials. Found and recycled objects, everyday materials and surfaces are transformed into works of art.
Beckmann lived in modest circumstances but remained firmly committed to her artistic vision. Her works are at once fragile and rebellious, playful and powerful – traces of a life that refused to conform to established conventions.
Laura Dahlberg: When The Air Disappears – Fragile creatures combining the organic and the technological
2 October 2026–24 January 2027, from the lobby to the museum’s 3rd floor
Laura Dahlberg (b. 1991) works with sculpture and installation. Her art brings organic and mechanical elements together to create sensory experiences shaped by movement, sound and materiality.
The exhibition When the Air Disappears, focuses on the mechanical creatures Dahlberg has constructed. Their movements are driven by carefully integrated structures in which motors and air set their bodies gently in motion, giving them an uncanny sense of life and pulse.
The creatures inhabit different environments within the museum, appearing among the other artworks as well as in the ruins of the museum’s lobby. Air circulates invisibly through their bodies, connecting different layers of time. What remains of these delicate creatures when the present becomes the past? And how might archaeologists of the future interpret the traces we leave behind?
Together, the two exhibitions invite visitors to look at existence from different perspectives – through materials, bodies, technology and the passage of time.
Interview requests and inquiries
Head of Exhibitions Terhi Tuomi
terhi.tuomi@avan.fi
0400 786 053
Photo: Liisi Beckmann 1989. Photographer: Jari Laurén.
