Simon Fujiwara's exhibition It's a Small World opens at Kiasma

The Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma is pleased to announce It’s a Small World, Simon Fujiwara’s first solo exhibition in Finland.

From performative lectures, video installations and paintings, to the creation of entire themed ‘worlds’, Fujiwara’s decade long practice employs a range of artistic strategies that seek to expand our notions of race, gender, national and sexual identities in a world increasingly mediated by technology and images. Often performing and even parodying his own identity in his work, he confronts these potent cultural topics in unexpected ways - mining fields such as advertising or theme park design, or drawing on art historical strategies, from Dadaism to Pop and Conceptual art.

Fujiwara’s work is informed by his early studies in architecture, and operate as ‘imaginary structures’ in which ethical and moral conundrums can coexist with the fantastical, surreal and absurd. These structures create spaces in which disconcerting aspects of life under 21st century capitalism can be examined in a playful and even pleasurable way.

The exhibition provides an introduction to the artist’s practice. It is curated by Kiasma’s chief curator João Laia.

Artist's biography

Simon Fujiwara (b. 1982, London) lives and works in Berlin. 

Recent solo exhibitions include LagoAlgo, Mexico City (2023); Hyundai Gallery, Seoul (2023); Gio Marconi, Milan (2023); Prada Aoyama, Tokyo (2022); Esther Schipper, Berlin (2022); Fondazione Prada, Milan (2021); Kunstinstituut Melly, Rotterdam (2021); Dvir Gallery, Brussels (2020); Blaffer Art Museum, Houston, Texas (2020); Taro Nasu, Tokyo (2019) and ARKEN Museum of Modern Art, Denmark (2019).

Selected group exhibitions and biennials include the Dhaka Art Summit, Bangladesh (2023); Kunsthalle Hamburg, Germany (2022); Biennale of Moving Image, UCCA, Beijing (2022); Biennale de l’Image en Mouvement, Geneva (2021) and Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin (2019).

Fujiwara’s work is represented in the collections of major international art institutions, including Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Tate, London; Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo; Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg; and Centre Pompidou, Paris.

Fujiwara is the recipient of the 2010 Baloise Prize at Art Basel and the 2010 Frieze Cartier Award. He was shortlisted for the Preis der Nationalgalerie, Berlin in 2019.

Simon Fujiwara – It’s a Small World 
1.3.–13.10.2024