Image: European Museum of Modern Art, Barcelona
EMMA – Espoo Museum of Modern Art has released ‘Axel Straschnoy: We Believe and Accept That These Beings Exist’, a publication expanding on the artist’s Finnish Art Academy Prize exhibition, which was presented at EMMA in Espoo from 15 April to 9 August 2026. The volume became available through the EMMA Shop’s physical store and online shop on 20 August.
The publication extends Straschnoy’s examination of the unexpected connections between politics, utopian thought and space exploration. His exhibition at EMMA centred on a large, multipart installation and artistic research project addressing posadism, a marginal political movement founded in the late 1950s by Argentine Trotskyist activist J. Posadas.
According to EMMA’s exhibition material, Posadas argued, among other things, that advanced communist civilisations existed in outer space and that contact with them could help create a society on Earth without poverty, hunger or war. Straschnoy’s project revisited these ideas against a backdrop of political, military and ecological crises, bringing together the languages of scientific research, political history and ufology.
The exhibition included text excerpts from a 1968 speech by Posadas, presented as hand-painted quotations resembling protest banners and oversized book pages. Videos in the installation combined voices from space research, political history and ufology in what EMMA described as a tense dialogue. The museum’s account of the project presents it as an investigation into both the limits of science and the possibilities of political imagination.
The new volume brings together three essays. Nella Aarne, the exhibition’s curator, examines Straschnoy’s combination of art, science and politics. Social critic A.M. Gittlitz traces the history of posadism from its beginnings to the present day, while cultural researcher Nikos Papastergiadis considers the significance of utopian thinking in the contemporary moment. The publication is issued in Finnish, Spanish and English, with images credited to Ari Karttunen / EMMA and graphic design by Piëtke Visser / Kuudes.
Straschnoy, born in Buenos Aires in 1978 and based in Helsinki, is described by EMMA as an artist and filmmaker whose practice uses numerous techniques to investigate the working methods of science and art. His projects are often long-term and multipart, and the museum says they invite viewers to reconsider familiar phenomena from new perspectives. The artist’s prize exhibition was produced by EMMA in cooperation with the Finnish Art Academy Foundation and the City of Espoo.
The publication forms part of the Finnish Art Academy Prize awarded to Straschnoy in 2025. The prize included both the exhibition at EMMA and a museum-published volume. ‘Axel Straschnoy: We Believe and Accept That These Beings Exist’ is now available from the EMMA Shop in Espoo and through its online store.
