New group exhibition at Amos Rex explores African and Afro-Nordic perspectives on the world

2 Oct

*Installation view of Adji Dieye’s Aphasia (2023) at Fotomuseum Winterthur. Photo: Fotomuseum Winterthur / Conradin Frei*

Are there other ways of understanding the world? That question lies at the heart of The Other Side of the Mountain – Southnord and Amos Rex’s autumn exhibition, which presents eleven contemporary artists working both on the African continent and its diaspora. The Other Side of the Mountain continues Southnord’s long-term engagement with the wide and varied artistic expressions, approaches and narratives that arise from the Afro-diasporic experience.

On Tuesday 13 October 2026, 10:00–12:00, Amos Rex invites the press to a viewing of the exhibition. Interviews with the artists can be booked by email (see below) no later than 12 October at 15:00.

Two stories about the same mountain

Underlying the exhibition’s title is a story from Minna Salami’s book Sensuous Knowledge: A Black Feminist Approach for Everyone, in which two explorers visit the same mountain but return with entirely different accounts of what they saw. The story suggests that reality itself appears diminished when only certain perspectives are allowed to live on, and shows what can become visible when other ways of understanding the world are heard and nurtured.

The artists in the exhibition explore urban environments and how structures in different landscapes bring people closer together or set them apart. Through African and Afro-Nordic perspectives, they raise questions of memory, migration, identity and movement, with the cityscape as a recurring stage. Working across diverse forms of expression – sound and light, glass and sand, textiles and scents – the artists give these themes a multifaceted and sensuous form.

“As curators, we were interested in the artists’ many-layered narratives, which are constantly reshaped as they move between and work in different places. Each of the works in the exhibition returns, in its own way, to different environments and reflects on how they affect people. The urban environment in particular – the city with its many layers – recurs in many forms throughout the exhibition. The works also build on and into one another, creating new paths and worlds in the exhibition space in a way that is both natural and surprising, like an ever-growing city,” say curators Marcia Harvey Isaksson and Katariina Timonen.

Participating artists:

Igshaan Adams, Akinbode Akinbiyi, Loulou Cherinet, Adji Dieye, Jeannette Ehlers, Lungiswa Gqunta, Liisa-Irmelen Liwata, Ibrahim Mahama, Sandra Mujinga, Emeka Ogboh and Karl Ohiri.

Information

The Other Side of the Mountain

Amos Rex, Helsinki, 14 October 2026 – 21 March 2027

More information about Southnord Artfest 2026 and the exhibition programme is available at southnord.com/artfest-2026.

Press contacts

General press enquiries:

Rosel Jackson Stern, Project Coordinator and rosel@southnord.com

Communications Manager, Southnord

Georgètte Dwomoh-Appiah, Project Coordinator and Communications Manager for

Artfest 2026, georgette@southnord.com

Press viewing, interview bookings and press images: Iiris Mattsson, Press Officer, Amos

Rex iiris.mattsson@amosrex.fi, +358 (0) 50 3022 260