Staged Cir­cum­stances and Piles of Things: A Solo Exhibition of Anna Estarriola

An acrobat stands on their hair, various elements that have arrived from different parts of the universe give speeches at a long table, and multiple whispers are heard from inside a giant beanie hat. The boundaries between the impossible and the possible are blurred, and our ways of perceiving reality are examined from numerous different angles. Staged Circumstances and Piles of Things is Anna Estarriola’s largest solo show to date.

In Amos Rex’s spring–summer 2025 exhibition by a Catalonia-born, Helsinki-based artist Anna Estarriola (b. 1980), the scales and distances vary from one artwork to the next, with different senses activated as our perspective changes. The gradually revealed layers and nested views of the installations are like scenes from a never-ending play. These multidimensional works depict a striving for communication, understanding and cooperation, as well as the inextricably linked moments of uncertainty and failure.

Anna Estarriola’s working process begins with small, imaginative sketch drawings. Their practical realisation requires extensive technical and theoretical knowledge, which is why she often creates her works in close collaboration with professionals from different fields – for example, a textile designer, choir singer, doctor, or dancer might participate in the production of an installation.

Estarriola frequently draws influences from the sciences and different belief systems, while also broadening her own understanding of how people and things function and exist. The illusions conjured up before our eyes are thus based on careful background research and on a working method in which encounters and dialogue between people are of great value during the process itself.

Amid these works filled with significant details, there is an emphasis on life – and death – as well as a kind of relentless attempt to explore individual and communal behaviours and different ways of communicating.

The exhibition contains seventeen works from the last ten years. The installations combine sculpture, moving image, sound, electronics and performance art. One of the earliest pieces is the video installation Transportable Altar for a Divinity (2015). Acquired in 2015 for the collections of Föreningen Konstsamfundet, which owns Amos Rex, the work stages the minor chores of everyday life as something divine. The most recent work is Piles of Things (2025), a three-part installation especially completed for the exhibition, reaching up towards the museum’s ceiling in defiance of gravity.

The exhibition is curated by Katariina Timonen.

The Artist

Anna Estarriola (b.1980) is a Catalonia-born visual artist who has lived and worked in Helsinki since 2004. In her artworks, Estarriola combines sculpture, moving images, sound, electronics and performance art. She studied sculpture at the Barcelona Academy of Art and graduated in 2004. Estarriola gained her Master of Fine Arts degree from the Academy of Fine Arts of the University of the Arts Helsinki in 2009, where she studied on the Time and Space Arts programme. She has also studied contemporary dance in Barcelona and Helsinki.

Estarriola’s works have been shown in numerous exhibitions in Finland and abroad, including Los Angeles, Berlin, Norrköping, Madrid and Seoul, and are in the collections of many Finnish museums and foundations, such as Finnish National Gallery, Jenny and Antti Wihuri Foundation, Pori Art Museum and Saastamoinen Foundation. Her video works and performances, in which she has been both director and performer, have been shown at international performance-art festivals and in various dance and theatre productions.

In 2015, Estarriola received the prestigious AVEK Award, which is given annually by the Promotion Centre for Audiovisual Culture to a distinguished artist working in media arts or other audiovisual culture in Finland. In 2019, she was awarded a Finnish five-year state artist grant.