Turku Art Museum is presenting ‘Divan’, a solo exhibition of new sculpture by the Helsinki-based artist Man Yau, from 2 October to 22 November 2026. It is one of three exhibitions the museum opened at the start of October, alongside a presentation of Hugo Simberg and ‘Wendi Yan: Dream of Walnut Palaces’.
Yau, born in 1991, is a sculptor whose work explores identity and the experience of being exoticised. She works across glass, silk, metal, ceramics and marble.
‘Divan’ takes as its starting point the reclining female figure, the odalisque, that recurs in Western art, particularly in nineteenth-century Orientalism, and the gaze, power and desire bound up with it. According to the museum, Yau turns the motif around: the body becomes a material surface and part of the furniture itself, while flesh and skin are treated as decoration, blurring the boundaries between body, object and image.
Among the new works is ‘self-portrait’ (2026), which combines a bronze silhouette with images of the artist’s body fired under a glaze. Another, ‘Sea, swallow me (a study of Anne Marie Carl-Nielsen’s mermaid [1921])’ (2026), is a table-like sculpture that revisits a work by the Danish sculptor. The museum describes the mermaid as a figure of loss and of the will to survive, and notes that Yau uses re-sculpting as a way of working through her own grief.
The opening was accompanied by ‘Fainting Room’, a poetry performance dedicated to Yau’s sculptures by the Helsinki-based performance poet and novelist Niko Hallikainen, held in the museum’s Studio space on 1 and 2 October.
The exhibition is supported by Greta och Alfred Runebergs Stiftelse, the Finnish Cultural Foundation, the Arts Promotion Centre Finland, the Finnish Heritage Agency and the Tiftö Foundation. After Turku, ‘Divan’ is scheduled to be shown at Margot Samel Gallery in New York in early 2027.
