06/04/2026
HAPPY SUFFERING!
Tervetuloa avajaisiin perjantaina
Welcome to the opening on Friday
10.04.2026 klo 18–21
It’s a perfect fit for us here in Finland. The happiest nation in the world. In real life, of course, no one actually believes this. Summer is an onslaught of mosquitoes, winter is a relentless cycle of slush and ice, and half the year is shrouded in darkness. During the other half, we can’t even catch a wink of sleep because the godforsaken sun refuses to set. At these latitudes, we understand the true meaning of a passion play—it simply means we had the misfortune of being born here. Yet, year after year, some statisticians manage to place us at the very peak of the global happiness index.
So, love your suffering.
In other words: love yourself. For suffering is profoundly human. We understand our own torment; we acknowledge that sorrow and pain are intrinsic to existence. Perhaps even the livestock in our industrial farms sense this—after all, the suffering of production animals reflects back to us as a mirror of our own empathy. This, too, is within our human capacity, and the most classical interpreters of the human emotional repertoire—religions—address the challenge each in their own way: some through sweating blood, others through rigorous asceticism. All in pursuit of a "better" human being.
Perhaps this suits the Finnish psyche. One need only look inside a sauna: in a blistering, sweltering furnace, people voluntarily flagellate themselves and each other with birch branches. Voluntarily. Maybe our reputation as the world’s happiest people stems from the transformative, refining power of traditional self-torture. Who can say? But suffering and its antithesis surely deserve an exhibition. Especially here in Finland—the paradise of the princes of darkness and the porch of the messengers of light.
Prepare yourselves for the happiest art exhibition in the world.
— Mikko Paakkola, vpj. Marginaalitaiteen tuki ry.
