Otobong Nkanga 'Tied to the Other Side' at Helsinki Biennale, Finland

10 June 2025

From 8 June – 21 September 2025, Helsinki Biennale will be exhibiting Tied to the Other Side (2021), a tapestry by Otobong Nkanga. Tied to the Other Side displayed in HAM Helsinki Art Museum's south gallery is a tapestry of abstracted plants, corals and human limbs floating in a landscape in which the universal narrative of life, death and rebirth unfurls. The artist describes the fragmented limbs as invoking the many human lives lost in perilous sea crossings both in the past and present. In the circle of life, the human is also transformed into something beyond-the-human. The needle-shaped structure piercing the right side of the artwork represents machines, human society and systems by which land and sea resources are exploited. The light-radiating cluster of levelling rods on the left represents an unknown future.

Nkanga’s artwork raises questions about the ownership of marine resources and the Rights of Water. The artist compares the depths of the sea to the deep time of geology, reminding us of our shared obligation to minimize human impacts on global ecosystems, while also intoning the message that the benefits of modern economic prosperity have not been distributed fairly between the Global South and North.

Made in collaboration with the Tilburg Textile Museum, the giant tapestry employs a variety of weaving techniques and one hundred and forty different colours of thread.

Find out more via Helsinki Biennale.

Otobong Nkanga, Tied to the Other Side, 2021. Detail of the artwork. Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Wim van Dongen.