MAIJA TAMMIOn the Third Day 6.9.2025 – 5.10.2025

A large-scale video projection of moving flower petals delight and disturb at the same time. A small black-and-white animation of a cockroach waking up in a cave elicits curiosity and nascent horror.

These two works form the main part of visual artist Maija Tammi’s installation, On the Third Day. The installation was originally commissioned by the Dutch art museum MU Hybrid Art House in 2024 and is now on view for the first time in Finland.

The name of the exhibition is a reference to the Biblical account of the Son of God rising up from the dead on the third day, and resurrection myths dating from ancient Egypt and Greece. The exhibition is focused on a signature theme of Tammi’s production: the unsettling liminal state between life and death.

In the animation, the cockroach has three days to work out why it is in the cave if it wishes to stay alive. On the 5-metre wide screen, the abundance of beautiful flower petals - reminiscent of the celebratory oil painting by the artist, Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema (1836-1912) from 1888 - conceals a disturbing secret, which threatens to be revealed at any moment. Together, the pair of works create an atmosphere where profound beauty and disgust intertwine with the aim of undermining and questioning all the simple ways in which we experience and describe our world. The works demonstrate the unpredictability of life and death and how we walk a tightrope between the two.

The exhibition also features complementary elements which offer the viewer unusual insights into the installation. Visitors to the exhibition can read an interview conducted by Tammi, in which Dutch researcher Floortje Bouwkamp talks about the predictions that the human brain constantly makes when processing visual perceptions. Without predictions, we would not see what we see. Roach, on the other hand, plays with the cockroach's dance of life and death by turning it into a computer game.

New works made for this exhibition are also featured. These include Tammi’s photographic diptych, The Roaches of Heliogabalus, and Veera Kaamos Pitkänen's three handmade paper collages related to the theme of the exhibition. Tammi's award-winning art books have been used as the collage material.

Like all Tammi’s works, the exhibition is the result of thorough research and collaboration with specialists from the various fields- writers, scientists, artists and technologists - to examine the liminal areas of mortality and immortality, science and art.

The animation narrative for On the Third Day is co-written by author Juhani Karila and Tammi, the research done by Ryan Arvidson, associate professor in biochemistry, and the animation was drawn by Teemu Hotti, voice acting by Laura Birn and music by Tammi’s long-time collaborator, the Finnish-Canadian composer and musician, Charles Quevillon.

Ariane Koek
Curator, author