HELSINKI.- Dafna Maimon’s exhibition at Kiasma opens up the human body, inviting its varied components and symptoms to sprout up and sprawl out around us. Visitors pass through a velvety intestinal tunnel and a cave-sized wisdom tooth to see artworks such as a series of pastel paintings showing mysterious internal worlds. We also encounter an enlarged tardigrade, one of the world’s toughest microscopic creatures, as well as noted proponent of the mind-body split René Descartes, who appears in Maimon’s musical installation Homebody – and whose dualistic worldview is challenged throughout the exhibition. Symptoms opens at Kiasma on 25 April 2025.
Dafna Maimon (b. 1982, Porvoo) creates quietly humorous depictions of human beings who are not always aware of their own bodies’ needs amid the demands of contemporary existence – a state viewers may recognise from their own lives.
In her artistic process, Maimon explores how and to what effect bodily knowledge is ignored in today’s society. She thinks of our bodies as carrying the joys and sorrows of being human and manifesting them in a diverse range of symptoms. In her work, these symptoms are considered signs of bodily wisdom that, if listened to, can provide us with tools for living more meaningful lives. Dafna Maimon’s work incorporates somatic exercises and methods that further delve into what it is to be a bodied human, often awakening images that serve as starting points for her artworks.
The exhibition includes video installations, paintings on velvet, sculptures and drawings. Three video works follow fictional characters immersed in modern-day lifestyles whose bodies communicate different signs and symptoms. Maimon’s most recent video installation, Homebody, premieres at Kiasma. In addition, a live musical expanding on Homebody’s themes and characters will be staged at Kiasma Theatre in August 2025.
Throughout this exhibition’s planning, Kiasma itself was thought of as a body: air and light pass through its openings, and the rough patches and scars on its surfaces are traces of life lived.
“Our power to affect the systemic causes of our various symptoms and the way our psycho-biological make-up reacts to them is limited. Luckily though, through creative processes and play, moments of agency can be brought to life and shared,” says Maimon of the thinking behind her exhibition.
“My work attempts to reconnect with our felt sense and depict the disruptions resulting from its devaluation in contemporary life, however challenging that is – considering that my own bodily intelligence is also afflicted.”
The exhibition is curated by Kiasma’s Piia Oksanen.
Dafna Maimon’s (b. 1982, Porvoo, Finland) work mutates between performance, video, drawing and immersive installation. In fictional and semi-autobiographical narratives, she surveys the ways in which humans handle recollections, stereotypes, abjection and traumatic experiences. In particular, her work deconstructs patriarchal structures and plays with them through exaggeration, subversion and re-contextualization. The study of diverse forms of community and belongingness is another throughline of her practice, as is the realization of long-term collaborative processes. Her humorous and often absurd approach taps deep into the human narrative and its vessel: the human body.
Maimon’s work has been shown at institutions and art spaces such as Helsinki Biennial (Helsinki), Kunst-Werke (Berlin), PS1 Moma (New York), Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp (Antwerp), Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art (Helsinki), Mahj Jewish Museum (Paris), Kim Center Contemporary Art (Riga), 1646 (Den Haag), BOAN1942, (Seoul), Center for Maine Contemporary Art (Rockland, Maine), and Gallery Wedding (Berlin). Maimon holds a BFA from the Gerrit Rietveld Academy and an MFA from the Sandberg Institute Amsterdam. She lives and works in Berlin.
