Eleven artists, one mountain: African art in Helsinki until March

Why would a Helsinki museum build a show around two explorers and one mountain? The title comes from a story by Minna Salami, adapted for the exhibition. In it, one explorer sees the mountain's barren side, and the other sees its fertile side.

Each returns with an opposing account. The story suggests that two views together give a richer picture of the world. The African proverb "Until the lion has their historian, the hunter will always be a hero" opens the show.

Eleven artists, one museum

The Other Side of the Mountain runs from 14 October 2026 to 21 March 2027. It fills Amos Rex with nearly 60 works and three new commissions. Some of the eleven artists work on the African continent. Others belong to the Afro-Nordic (African diaspora artists who work in the Nordic countries) community. Five work in the Nordic region, and two of them are based in Finland.

Marcia Harvey Isaksson of Southnord and Katariina Timonen of the museum curated the show together. Southnord is an artist-led platform focused on Afro-Nordic contemporary art. The show belongs to Southnord Artfest 2026. Artfest is a nomadic Nordic triennial (an art event held every three years), and its first edition took place in Stockholm in 2023. For most of the artists, e-flux notes, this is a first exhibition in Finland.

What you will see

• Loulou Cherinet paints new parts of Helsinki, such as Kalasatama and Jätkäsaari, in Scapeland.
• Ibrahim Mahama made three new works, one covering the museum staircase. He used textiles, rubber waste from a tyre factory and metal seals from cocoa sacks.
• Jeannette Ehlers shows the neon work Until the Lion in the window facing Mannerheimintie. A former Danish slave-trading fort in Ghana inspired it.
• Emeka Ogboh's Transmissions centres on a yellow Danfo bus that he drove to Finland.
• Sandra Mujinga fills Skin to Skin with 55 sculptural figures.
• Akinbode Akinbiyi shows 36 large black-and-white street photographs of Bamako, Lagos and Johannesburg.
• Igshaan Adams makes woven works based on satellite images of his childhood neighbourhood in Cape Town.

I would need a very large flask of coffee to drive a bus that far.

The city as a theme

Cities are the common thread in the show. It asks how cities and modern landscapes shape our links to each other and to place. MyHelsinki says it uses Black perspectives and other ways of knowing to see cities as living systems. It also looks at landscapes as products of state planning.

How to go

The museum stands at Mannerheimintie 22 to 24 in Helsinki. It opens from 11.00 to 20.00 on Monday and Wednesday to Friday. Weekend hours are 11.00 to 17.00, and Tuesday is closed. The pages we read give no ticket prices, so check before you go.

Would you visit?