Helsinki Biennial 2025 is a major contemporary art event showcasing 37 artists or collectives from Finland and around the world. Roughly half of the featured works will be site-specific new commissions premiering in Helsinki.

The third edition of Helsinki Biennial envisions art as a source of shelter and compassion, both conceptually and physically. With animals, plants, insects, minerals as their protagonists, the artworks employ various interspecies perspectives in exploring the significance of nonhuman actors to the wellbeing of our shared planet.

Standing over twelve meters tall in Esplanade Park, Giuseppe Penone’s “Luce e Ombra” at Helsinki Biennial is a sculptural representation of metamorphosis through which the artist reflects on the inseparable connection between humans and nature. Penone believes that human-defined dualisms and interspecies boundaries are fundamentally artificial, because all things are inextricably intertwined.

The leafless crown of the bronze tree reaches for the sky like a grasping hand, while lower down, a nodding outgrowth of foliage gathers light vital for life. Perched atop of the tree is a perfect granite sphere that appears to have fallen from the sky. Contrasting with the organic forms, its pristine geometrical shape suggests something sculpted by human hands, or perhaps by time.