Empathy

Empathy is an essential part of interaction. It builds community, evokes compassion, and creates a desire to help. Empathy is often defined as the ability to put oneself in another’s position – to understand another’s thoughts and feel their emotions.

The exhibition explores the layered nature of empathy. It examines how an individual recognizes and responds to another’s feelings while expanding the perspective: how empathy intertwines with society, culture, and interspecies relationships.

Can empathy also serve as a tool of power? How is empathy distributed differently among various human groups and species? Why do some people or animals evoke strong empathy in us, while others remain outside it? The exhibition invites reflection on how empathy is directed and on what grounds.

Although empathy is often seen as a solution to social and ecological problems, it can also maintain and reinforce power structures. The exhibition suggests that empathy does not necessarily mean complete understanding; rather, it can be a space where differences, conflicts, and power relations are acknowledged, and encounters occur amid these tensions.

Cyber Performance – A Unique Experience in the Museum

As part of the Empathy exhibition, there is artist Ali Akbar Mehta’s artwork purgatory EDIT: The Liberation Archives for the Cyborgs of Now (2026). The artwork is a user-generated montage-based cinematic experience.

The artwork explores how digital technologies shape the subconscious and our sense of reality—through visual manipulation, sensory overload, data fatigue, and ideological numbness. At the same time, the work asks what happens to empathy when reality is filtered through screens and algorithms: does human connection persist, or does it shift? Does witnessing violence heighten emotional sensitivity, or does it numb us to its presence?

The artwork includes a performance that invites participant to engage and explore the artwork’s archive in a guided way. It combines the act of viewing with the participant’s emotions, bodily reactions, and thought processes. To enable this, the experience uses an EEG brain sensor, a brain–computer interface (BCI), and custom software developed by the purgatory EDIT team.

Perspectives on the theme are brought by artists from the Vantaa Art Museum collection and invited artists.

The artists of the exhibition (15.4.-12.7.2026)

Malin Ahlsved, Kari Cavén, Kaisu Koski, Anne Koskinen, Ali Akbar Mehta, Mari Mäntynen, Kirsi Neuvonen, Tapio Nyyssönen, Pekka Pitkänen, Lau Rämö, Kerttu Saali, Timo Saarelma, Elsa Salonen, Pentti Sammallahti, Tommi Toija, Toni R. Toivonen, Aki Turunen, Viggo Wallensköld.

The artists of the exhibition (13.7.-18.10.2026)

Malin Ahlsved, Kari Cavén, Marjatta Hanhijoki, Kaisu Koski, Anne Koskinen, Ali Akbar Mehta, Mari Mäntynen, Kirsi Neuvonen, Tapio Nyyssönen, Pekka Pitkänen, Lau Rämö, Kerttu Saali, Timo Saarelma, Elsa Salonen, Tommi Toija, Toni R. Toivonen, Aki Turunen, Viggo Wallensköld.

The exhibition is supported by the Finnish Heritage Agency with a grant for artists’ exhibition fees.

As Part of the Exhibition the Future School

The Empathy exhibition includes a workshop space created by Artsi in cooperation with the Children and Youth Foundation’s Future School. In this space, visitors imagine a positive future Vantaa shaped by empathy. The workshop space invites both groups and independent museum visitors to embark on an exploratory journey into alternative futures.

As part of the collaboration, activities are organized in the workshop space in which young people from Vantaa themselves imagine and examine alternative futures. The young participants have the opportunity to consider what kinds of futures they wish to see and to develop the skills needed to bring about positive change. The aim of the activities is to strengthen young people’s own agency – their ability to understand, envision, and collaboratively create better futures.

The Children and Youth Foundation’s Future School is a pioneer in futures education, combining methods from futures studies with arts education.