Image: EMMA – Espoo Museum of Modern Art
EMMA – Espoo Museum of Modern Art is showing Antti Laitinen’s 'Helisevä metsä', a kinetic installation that turns wood gathered from southern Finland into a constructed forest landscape. The work is on view from 24 September 2025 to 23 August 2026 at the museum in Espoo, and the institution describes it as part of its InCollection series with the Saastamoinen Foundation.
Laitinen, born in 1975, is based in Somero and works with materials found close to home. EMMA says his recent practice has focused on shaping, dismantling and reassembling trees and forest landscapes. In 'Helisevä metsä', the artist has assembled the installation from wood collected across southern Finland, including branches, brushwood left on clear-cut areas and root systems from windfallen trees.
According to the museum, the installation rises from EMMA’s concrete floor as 28 sculptural trees. These separate elements are recomposed into a human-made forest, with mechanical devices providing movement, sound and a new kind of life. The work is described as a kinetic piece that prompts reflection on the ways people alter nature and on the environmental consequences of that influence.
The exhibition text also places 'Helisevä metsä' within Laitinen’s broader method. EMMA notes that natural environments often serve as the starting point for his works, though the subject of the works is not always simply nature itself. Alongside installations, he also uses video and photography to address related themes. The museum cites earlier projects in which Laitinen has disassembled a whole tree and reassembled it, and another in which he attempted to move a lake using only buckets. Laitinen describes his works as physical experiments, with the process of making taking priority over the final outcome.
EMMA links the exhibition to the wider InCollection programme, a series of annual commission-based exhibitions produced together with the Saastamoinen Foundation. The museum says Laitinen is the eighth artist in the series. The current presentation sits alongside EMMA’s broader exhibition programme, which also includes the permanent Saastamoisen säätiön kokoelmanäyttely 'Dialogeja' and other changing exhibitions on the museum’s upper floor.
The museum’s club newsletter, dated 14 July 2026, notes that visitors can still see 'Helisevä metsä' until 23 August. The same newsletter says the installation forms a human-made forest made from branches, roots and other wood collected from forests and logging areas in southern Finland, with the mechanical structures giving the work movement, sound and a distinct atmosphere. EMMA also provides a separate digital documentary on the making of the work, 'Rakentuva metsä', through EMMA Zone.
