KOKIMO's Tablescape inaugurates HAM’s Space for New Art

The KOKIMO collective's Tablescape is an immersive, performative work experienced through sight, sound, and touch. Twenty participants at a time gather around a shared table for an experience that engages both the senses and the imagination. Through sound, light, moving image, and vibration, the performance activates a shifting field of associations among the diners.

The work reflects on humanity’s entanglement with nature, the environment, and wider ecosystems. The audience hears an intergenerational conversation that evokes memory and carries them through time – leaping decades into the future and tracing the movement of water across near and distant scales.

“With this work, we want to contribute to the ongoing discussion around sustainability. While evoking a range of associations, we also direct the audience’s attention toward the environment. Planetary citizenship extends to art and artists as well. Humans are part of nature, and it is our responsibility to care for it and reflect on the impact of our actions. In our work, we strive to embrace an intergenerational perspective and to transcend the boundaries between animate and inanimate matter,” KOKIMO explains.

Each performance accommodates 20 participants, begins on the hour, and lasts approximately 20 minutes. The performance is in Finnish, with Swedish and English translations available in the gallery. The spoken material includes excerpts from Jenni Räinä’s book Veden ajat – Matka läpi muuttuneen maiseman (LIKE, 2025).

KOKIMO is an artist collective founded in 2010, whose members work across performing and contemporary art. For KOKIMO, the concepts of stage and audience are in constant flux – the stage can emerge anywhere, engaging audiences in a multisensory theatre: ‘kokimo’ translates roughly as ‘experience theatre’. The working group for Tablescape consists of Raisa Kilpeläinen, Pauli Kotilainen, Viljami Lehtonen, Veera-Maija Murtola, and Anna Pöllänen.

HAM’s Space for New Art: Innovative Exhibition Concepts and Artist Collaborations

HAM’s Space for New Art showcases experimental visual art and new exhibition concepts developed in collaboration with artists. Three artists or collectives are selected for the space each year through an open call, highlighting annually changing themes, emerging practices, and new approaches to engaging HAM’s audiences.

The first open call was held in spring 2025, with three exhibition projects selected for the inaugural season. The opening exhibition is KOKIMO's Tablescape. This is to be followed by Antti Tolvi’s For Organ and Pause, with MSL (Antti Jussila and Jade Kallio) completing the season line-up.

“The Space for New Art is a site for experimentation, incompleteness, and tangential thinking. We want to offer artists a space to create work that does not necessarily fit into traditional formats, and invite the public to join us on this journey of exploration,” says Sanna Juntunen, one of the curators for HAM's Space for New Art,  who has worked closely with the Tablescape exhibition.

The application period for the second cycle took place in spring 2026, and the selected artists or collectives will be announced later this year.

KOKIMO: Tablescape – 29.5.–23.8.2026 – HAM Helsinki Art Museum