On Foot

Serlachius Headquarters

26.09.2026

—21.02.2027

Walking connects every aspect of human experience – the purposeful stride back home after a hard day’s work, a brief stroll for fresh air, the struggle against environmental forces, the walk towards a possible death, even death itself walking – at least in an artwork.
 
On Foot presents the first comprehensive examination of walking in a Finnish museum to trace how artists and scientists over two centuries have found in this most fundamental activity a subject capable of carrying profound meanings about human nature..
 
Building on and expanding from the work of Finnish artists in the collections of the Serlachius Museums – from Akseli Gallen-Kallela to Elina Brotherus and Marcus Collin to Mark Wallinger. In addition, the exhibition showcases artworks on loan from other Finnish museums as well as new wotks by contemporary artists.

Walking in all forms

Through works, walking is positioned as subject and practice through changing times and contexts. The featured paintings, drawings, sculptures, photographs, and videos explore the many aspects of human gait. Not only familiar contrasts of practical and leisurely, solitary and communal, through seasons and stages of life, and expressions of manners and custom. 

But also the unexpected connections between childhood and death, absence and time, bodies and archives, scientific understanding and mass surveillance, and gait signatures of artistic kind. 

By focusing on this single act, the exhibition illuminates broader questions about temporality, social relationships, belonging, environment, war, daily battles great and small, and marks that our movements generate on physical surfaces and in memory. The exhibition is curated by Dr Tomi Moisio and Dr Carlos Idrobo. 

Artwork image: Marcus Collin, Snow shovellers, 1926, oil on canvas, Gösta Serlachius Fine Arts Foundation. Photo: Hannu Miettinen