Embrace Your Empathy, 2016/2025
Installation, 20 Flags
Dimensions variable
Co-commissioned by EMΣΤ
Courtesy of the artists
Embrace Your Empathy, 2016
Single channel video, 6′ 37″
Sound: Mikko Virmajoki
Animation: Matti Vesanen
Gustafsson & Haapoja are a collaborative duo consisting of author and playwright Laura Gustafsson and visual artist Terike Haapoja. Their work explores multispecies coexistence, nature and non-human life through exhibitions, stage work and texts. Embrace Your Empathy is a two-part project comprising of installation and video. The installation features 20 purple flags representing nation states, each modified to include images of animals culturally or biologically significant to the state to which the flag refers. For the exhibition the various flags hang from the ceiling on several floors of the Museum. The two-channel video installation that accompanies the flags, presents phrases from a manifesto written by Laura Gustafsson, positioning empathy as a revolutionary force. A mixture of words and animated images fill the night sky as they eventually turn into constellations of different animals. This work urges us to acknowledge the will, agency and desire of many people to incorporate ethics into their daily lives, vis-à-vis regarding their environment and the life in it.
Laura Gustafsson was born in Mäntälä, Finland, and Terike Haapoja was born in Helsinki, Finland; Laura Gustafsson lives and works in Helsinki, Finland, and Terike Haapoja lives and works in Berlin, Germany.
Gustafsson & Haapoja is a long-term collaboration between writer Laura Gustafsson and artist Terike Haapoja, whose work explores interspecies relations, political imaginaries, and alternative modes of coexistence. Through immersive installations, performances, and publications, they examine how institutions, language, and law shape the boundaries of community. Their work combines critical inquiry with poetic and often playful strategies, challenging dominant anthropocentric narratives and advocating for an ethics grounded in vulnerability, interdependence, and care.
