As part of a collaboration between EMMA – Espoo Museum of Modern Art and the Saastamoinen Foundation, a new work is commissioned annually from a visionary contemporary artist. An exhibition is then curated around the commission, The artist – chosen jointly by the foundation and EMMA – is invited to visit the museum well before the exhibition to become acquainted with EMMA’s collection, programming, exhibition space, and surroundings.

The project goes beyond a conventional exhibition or commission in offering artists an opportunity to create a compelling spatial experience with a long lifespan. The work is created exclusively for EMMA and will remain in the Saastamoinen Foundation Art Collection after the exhibition. Linked together as a series, each artist adds their distinct voice to a gradually expanding constellation. Over the years, this continuum will form its own special sub-collection within the collection. One of our guiding ideas was to create a platform for ongoing, processual collaboration between the artist, the foundation, and EMMA, to enable something more special and unique than any of us could pull off individually.

InCollection series of commission works include Alicja Kwade’s Trans-For-Men (Fibonacci), Tatsuo Miyajima’s Sky of Time, Eeva-Leena Eklund’s Dance With Me and Lilac Ice, Chiharu Shiota’s Tracing Boundaries, Pilvi Takala’s Close Watch, Pierre Huyghe’s Abyssal Plain and Tschabalala Self’s Anthurium.

The process of creating an artwork exclusively for EMMA and curating an exhibition around it takes place gradually, in dialogue between EMMA and the artist. This type of process leads to something truly original – something that cannot be recreated anywhere else in the exact same form. One of our key motivations for launching this collaboration was to give EMMA and the foundation a chance to engage in deeper exchange of ideas with artists, enabling their work to materialize as closely as possible to their original creative vision.

All the artists featured so far have created uniquely captivating experiences for our museum visitors, for which we owe them a debt of gratitude. Their success provides an incentive for us to continue our ambitious, long-term work on the InCollection series.