Time Machine and Utopias: Longing, Living conditions, Homecoming Time Machine and Utopias: Longing, Living conditions, Homecoming

Time Machine and Utopias: Longing, Living conditions, Homecoming

curated by Hanna Johansson, at the Ainola Museum, Visavuori Museum, and Tarvaspää Museum, FI

Aikakoneita ja utopioita | Time Machine and Utopias, project website, 2021 Aikakoneita ja utopioita | Time Machine and Utopias, project website, 2021

The Time Machines and Utopias is an exhibition series showcased in three museums, Tarvaspää, Ainola and Visavuori, which explore the museums’ possibilities to operate in our changing society. The exhibition is based on the topical theme of climate change intending to force a rethinking of our day-to-day choices on food, travel and housing.

As part of this exhibition, ‘The Ballad of the Lost Utopian Meadow’ by Vidha Saumya and Ali Akbar Mehta is presented as a studio-recorded sound work accessed via the project website, and an installed audio-video work, and as LIVE performances of the ballad, by varialambo (Varia Sjöström and Hatz Lambo), and ‘Ruis’, an autoethnographic fiction about the history and life-cycle of rye written and performed by Joss Allen.


Performance dates

22 August 2021 Visavuori

29 August 2021 Tarvaspää

13 August 2021 Ainola


Detailed information available on the Time Machine and Utpias website here, and in English here.


The exhibition in Tarvaspää focuses on travel and transport. The artist Akseli Gallen-Kallela’s (1865–1931) travels across oceans and to virgin forests open new perspectives on the reasons for travel and wanderlust. The exhibition transports the audience from Tyrvää in the 1880s to New Mexico in the 1920s with a visit in Old Rauma and snow-covered Konginkangas.

The exhibition in Ainola sheds light on the theme of food and food production. The garden created by Aino Sibelius (1871–1969) was versatile and meant that the household was largely self-sufficient. In the exhibition, art unfolds amidst vegetation in the form of sculptures and pigments found in plants and the soil and sound art resonating in an apple tree. The garden uncovers aspects of day-to-day life a hundred years ago and allows us to reflect on the problems and possibilities connected to food.

In Visavuori, exhibition guests have a chance to explore past and present housing utopias. In 1892, Emil Wikström (1864–1942) arrived at the rocky shores of Visavuori and felt like he had come home. He built a studio and a home where all the household amenities had been carefully considered. The exhibition poses the question of what makes a place a home and what life was like in artists’ homes a hundred years ago.

The exhibition is a project by a group of contemporary artists whose works of art reveal new perspectives on artist’s museums as well as on the changes needed in our everyday life in these times of change in our society. The artists have been invited to participate in the exhibition by the curator Hanna Johansson (MA). Sandra Lindblom (MA) oversees the curating of the collections and archive materials. The Finnish Cultural Foundation has funded the exhibition project under the Museum Vision grant.

Contemporary artists: Vilma Määttänen, nabbteeri, Nestori Syrjälä, Markus Tuormaa, Flyin Squirrels Papana & Norkko, and Vidha Saumya & Ali Akbar Mehta.

Curating of the contemporary art Hanna Johansson

Curating of the collections Sandra Lindblom

Tarvaspää dialogies Sini Forssell & Timo Järvensivu

Composing of soundscapes Joona Lukala & Eetu Moisio

Exhibition architecture Alisha Davidow

Project Management Mari Viita-aho

Graphic Design TSTO


This exhibition project has been funded by The Finnish Cultural Foundation, under the Museum Vision grant, and by the Ministry of Education and Culture: special subsidy for artists’ exhibition fees.