Morbus 2.4.–21.9.2025

In the spring and summer of 2025 Morbus fills Villa Gyllenberg with contemporary art that explores the theme of illness and getting sick. How do we relate to the body and illness in our performance-oriented and health-obsessed culture? We fear illness and the decay of the body. We believe we can control our bodies and monitor our health with the help of various devices and applications. We have become the scriptwriters of our bodies. Through diet, exercise, drugs, beauty treatments and surgeries, we strive for unrealistic physical perfection. The body and our health have become a life-filling project where there is no room for reflection on vulnerability and mortality. In our exercise addiction, we imagine that we are immortal and immune to diseases.

The sight of blood and internal organs under the skin disgusts us, yet at the same time they fascinate us, as evidenced by the popularity of horror movies, for example. Artists have been selected for the exhibition who deal with corporeality or illness in their works: getting sick, medicalisation, internal organs, body parts and mental health. Art can be a way for both creators and viewers of art to face their fears related to illness, the weakening of the body's and the mind's ability to function, and death. The fragility and inadequacy that are components of being sick remind us of our mortality and foster compassion for one another. The art presented in the exhibition ponders whether we can also find beauty inside our body, even in its illness?

The curator of the exhibition, artist Magdalena Åberg, has selected works by fifteen contemporary artists and a few older works for the exhibition. Installations, paintings, sculptures and photographs fill the gallery space of Villa Gyllenberg and partially spread into the home museum as well.

The artists presented in the exhibition are: Oscar Chan Yik Long, Saara Ekström, Raija Jokinen, Ulla Jokisalo, Tapani Kokko, Ida Koitila, Henrika Lax, Johanna Naukkarinen, Eeti Piiroinen, Jyrki Riekki, Mari Sunna, Pauliina Turakka Purhonen, Hanna Vihriälä, Viggo Wallensköld and Magdalena Åberg, as well as Albert Edelfelt, Helene Schjerfbeck and Rafael Wardi.

Morbus is Latin and means disease or illness. The exhibition was inspired by the medical research support activities of the Signe and Ane Gyllenberg Foundation, which runs the museum. The founders were interested in the connection between the mind and the body, and the foundation continues to support psychosomatic medicine by awarding substantial grants.

Picture: Magdalena Åberg, Entrails 1 (Chirrosis), 2019, oil on wood, 89,5 x 122 cm, owned by the artist. Photo: Jussi Tiainen.