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Arcana Borealis—Northern Women and Esotericism opens October 23 at Helsinki’s Ateneum Art Museum, with more than 200 works by 50 artists. The exhibition examines how women artists across the Nordic region and Sápmi drew on spiritual beliefs and artistic communities, including Hilma af Klint’s collaboration with Anna Cassel and Outi Pieski’s work with Sámi performers.
Arcana Borealis—Northern Women and Esotericism opens October 23 at Helsinki’s Ateneum Art Museum, bringing together more than 200 works by 50 artists. The exhibition examines women’s artistic practices shaped by spirituality and esotericism, while emphasizing collaboration and community alongside individual creativity.
The Finnish National Gallery says the exhibition spans painting, sculpture, textiles, stained glass and video. It includes early 20th-century artists Hilma af Klint and Anna Cassel, as well as Anna-Eva Bergman, Maja Fjaestad, Sonja Ferlov Mancoba and contemporary Sámi artist Outi Pieski. The museum says the works broaden perspectives on creative practices shaped by belief systems, ecology and imagination.
Af Klint and Cassel worked together in The Five, a Stockholm-based group of women who explored spiritual subjects through séances and meditation. Pieski’s performance Guhte gullá / Here to Hear was made with dancers and choreographers Biret and Gáddjá Haarla Pieski. Drawing on their Sámi heritage and traditional clothing, the work addresses trauma associated with state-sponsored assimilation and discrimination, according to the source report.
The exhibition runs through February 28, 2027. Its geographical scope includes Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Iceland and Sápmi, the Sámi homeland spanning northern parts of Norway, Sweden and Finland.
Networks Behind the Art
The exhibition shifts attention toward the relationships and shared beliefs that helped shape artists’ work. The museum says it challenges art historical narratives centered on the “lone artistic genius,” a framing that can obscure collaboration and the communities surrounding creative practice.
Its focus also connects spiritual and artistic histories with questions of identity and belonging. Pieski’s collaborative performance, for example, brings Sámi heritage and the effects of assimilation into a show that also includes early modernist works. The exhibition places those different practices in conversation without suggesting that they share a single purpose or history.
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Spiritual Practice in Modern Art
Af Klint was working in Stockholm around 1906 and understood her vivid paintings as the result of spiritual channeling, according to the source report. Art historians now recognize her work among the earliest known abstract art in the canon; its place in that history has revised accounts that had credited the beginnings of abstraction to Wassily Kandinsky around 1910.
The exhibition’s title combines arcana, Latin for “hidden knowledge,” with borealis, meaning “the north.” The museum describes the North as a cross-border cultural and imaginative space shaped by mythology and spiritual traditions. Its account follows artists’ engagement with alternative cosmologies, meditation and mediumistic practices as they explored existence, creativity and belonging.
“The exhibition challenges “art historical narratives that have privileged the myth of the lone artistic genius.””
— Ateneum Art Museum
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Exhibition Details Still Pending
The available announcement does not specify the full artist list, how the more than 200 works are divided among participants, or whether related events will accompany the exhibition. It also does not provide further detail on how individual works will be arranged or interpreted in the galleries.
The exhibition’s account of spiritual influence reflects the subject and framing presented by its organizers. The announcement does not establish that artists’ beliefs or methods were identical, nor does it offer a single explanation for the role of esotericism in each artist’s work.
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Helsinki Opening and Run
Arcana Borealis opens October 23 at the Ateneum Art Museum in Helsinki and is scheduled to remain on view until February 28, 2027. Further visitor information, including any accompanying programs, may be provided by the museum as the opening approaches.
Sámi traditional clothing and accessories
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Key Questions
When and where does Arcana Borealis open?
It opens October 23, 2026, at the Ateneum Art Museum in Helsinki and runs through February 28, 2027.
How many artists and works are included?
The exhibition brings together more than 200 works by 50 artists, according to the Finnish National Gallery.
Which artists are featured?
Named artists include Hilma af Klint, Anna Cassel, Anna-Eva Bergman, Maja Fjaestad, Sonja Ferlov Mancoba and Outi Pieski. The announcement does not provide a complete list.
What does the exhibition explore?
It examines how women artists across the Nordic region and Sápmi engaged with spirituality, esotericism and artistic communities, through media ranging from painting and sculpture to textiles, video and performance.
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