9–30.7.2026

Welcome to the Office of (national) Desire!

Please take a number and wait to be evaluated.

This Office is a temporary multifunctional institution dedicated to the administration of marriage, national identity, happiness and love for nature. Here, visitors may seek approval for marriage through a variety of official procedures, test their eligibility to be Finnish nationals, inspect national treasures and inventions.

At the Office of (national) Desire the decision making process of who has the right to get married or call themselves nationals of a certain country is being turned inside out. Wedding rings are fitted with oversized street stones, heavy enough to pull the hand toward the ground. Birch trees become traps and a giant, almost tree-like “Mariskooli” towering over everything. Nature behaves like bureaucracy, and bureaucracy slowly transforms into folklore. National symbols mingle with chewing gum, glitter, saliva and other suspicious materials.

The Wedding bureau, located within the Office, offers the visitors the opportunity to experience the wedding process from the very beginning of the official procedure. It also provides clarity on whether their couple, trios, quartets or other types of family formations are eligible for marriage. The wedding planning process, following the decision, is aimed to make the experience of their marriage unforgettable!

Overseeing the Office is Pekka Suomalainen, a devoted volunteer, self-appointed patriot and vigilant guardian of Finnish values. Pekka ensures that all procedures are carried out correctly and that the Office continues to function efficiently. He may appear without warning to inspect visitors, supervise all of the Office ceremonies or verify that Finnishness is being properly maintained.

This collective work is carried out by five queer artists with very distinct artistic practices: Sofi Häkkinen works with sculpture and performance, Dash Che is a performance artist, Ton Melnyk and Masha Ravlyk – artist duo working with textiles and performance and Henna Nerg works with textile sculptures, installations and performance. The artists selected through the open call themed Cooperation, have been meeting throughout the year to get to know each others’ artistic practices and explore both tensions and common ground that emerges through collaboration.

Humorous, uncanny and occasionally abject, the works approach institutional bonds such as marriage and nationalism through a queer lens, unsettling familiar traditions without abandoning their emotional pull. Visitors are invited to navigate a landscape where official procedures become magical rituals, domestic objects become monuments, and the boundaries between nature, bureaucracy and fantasy begin to dissolve.

The Office will open starting the 9th of June at 18:00. In the following days it will be open on workdays (Monday to Friday) from 12:00 till 18:00 and will permanently close on the 30th of June.

The Office will have special appearances on 16th, 18th, 23rd and 29th of July and possible unscheduled appearances on other days. For further information, check the Office schedule, please.

Artist Bios

Sofi Häkkinen is a visual artist born in Oulu, Finland, and living in Helsinki. They work with sculpture and performance, and as the artistic director of the multiart collective Recover Laboratory. Häkkinen has Master’s Degrees in Art from Uniarts Academy of Fine Arts and Aalto University. Häkkinen’s work is supported by a Finnish Cultural Foundation working grant and the Finnish Artist’s Association’s Young Artist Grant in 2026.

Themes in Häkkinen’s art include pop, nostalgia, horror, humor, death, sentimentality and kitsch. They use mediums such as wood, metal casting, found materials, and ready-made. Important things embedded in Häkkinen’s artistic work are a queer way of thinking and doing, honesty about motives and materials, freedom of intuition and a twisted juxtaposition of themes and materials. Big dramatic gestures and cliches rising from the mundane with campy undertones to point out that futility and importance exist in the same moment.

Henna Nerg is an artist based in Helsinki who got their master’s degree from KMD Bergen in Norway in 2023. Their work explores themes of otherness and queerness. They are an active member of the drag performance groups the Vampy Villains and the Hagfags, as well as a founding member of the queer activist artist collective Wild Thingz, which helped organize Copenhagen’s alternative Pride event and was nominated for the LGBTQ+ Event Award. Their work combines drag, queer, and camp aesthetics. Both conceptually and physically, they are interested in exploring othered bodies and aesthetics that are considered monstrous and demonized.

Nerg is an artist who works in the fields of sculpture and installation, focusing on material sensitivity. In their work, Nerg combines found and recycled materials in various ways. They engage with contemporary, socially engaged, and global phenomena, approaching them from a critical intersectional and ecofeminist perspective.

Dash Che is a trans masc post-Soviet immigrant performance maker based in Helsinki. They explore personal histories, political topics, and conflicting concepts through materiality of the body, objects and humor. They have shown their works nationally, such as, at Moving in November Dance Festival, Zodiak Center for New Dance, New Performance Turku Festival, and internationally such as at MIR festival in GR, TanzHaus in Zurich, CH and Riga Performance Festival Starptelpa in Riga, LV. Additionally, they are a performance art educator who practices in various institutional and DIY settings and a part of the Mean Time Between Failures duet with Suvi Tuominen. Dash holds BA from UC Berkeley, USA in Interdisciplinary Studies and Performance Studies in Dance and MA in Live Art and Performance Studies from University of Arts in Helsinki. Currently Dash’s artistic work is supported by Kone Foundation.

Ton Melnyk is an independent multidisciplinary artist and queer feminist activist from Kyiv now living in Helsinki. Graduated from Kyiv National University of Technology and Design with a Master in Art degree. Recently Melnyk’s works were shown at Outsider Art Festival 2024 and 2025 in Helsinki, GoEast SYMPOSIUM, The Other Queers in Wiesbaden and Fabrika festival in Copenhagen. Their mediums are: textiles, clothes, performative practices, video, participatory and curatorial practices. Melnyk works with themes of labour rights, migration, body liberation, issues of discrimination and ways to overcome it, relationships between human and nonhuman creatures, climate change and antiwar topics. Melnyk is co-founder of Sewing cooperative ReSew – participatory project about the world they want to live in: without violence, exploitation, built on horizontal relationships, mutual aid and the value of every life creature and surrounding. Works in duet with Masha Ravlyk.

Masha Ravlyk is an artist, curator, activist, queer and double migrant. They was born in the USSR near the Volga river (Russia nowadays), graduated from St.Petersburg state university, the faculty of liberal arts and sciences, art criticism and curatorship program, and got a master degree. Lived in Kyiv 2016-2022. Now has temporary protection in Finland, lives in Helsinki-Espoo with Ton Melnyk and their cats Kvirusia and Shpulia. Masha is co-founder and participant of two sewing cooperatives: Shvemy and ReSew. Works in duet with Ton Melnyk as well as individually. Their media are textile, clothes, video, performance, participatory practices. The main topics are anti-war, labor rights, alternative economy, resistance against capitalism and patriarchy, ecology, migration, poverty, self-care, queer community subculture. They insists that all art is political.

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For more information and interview requests:

Curator Julius Valve, valve.julius@gmail.com +358405276467 (every day from 12pm to 8pm)