Taiwanese artist Lee Mingwei’s live performance work Sonic Blossom is set to be exhibited at Helsinki’s Ateneum Art Museum, Finland’s best-known art museum and the one of the three institutions that form the Finnish National Gallery. Supported by the Ministry of Culture, Taiwan, the exhibition will run from the 24th September to the 24th October, marking the first time a Taiwanese artist has been exhibited at the venue.

The Ateneum Art Museum, as the oldest and largest museum in the country, is the home of Finnish art, with a collection of more than 20,000 art works that date from the eighteenth century to the modern day. Marja Sakari, Director of the museum, points out that when Lee Mingwei’s “The Mending Project” featured at the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma in 2019, it received a very warm reaction and created unique dialogues with visitors, and therefore she hopes to introduce another important work by Lee.

Performed in the exhibition hall of “The Stories of Finnish Art,” Sonic Blossom sees opera singers in special costumes randomly select visitors, asking if they are willing to accept a gift. If they agree, the singer will offer the visitor a seat as they sing short Lieder (art songs) by Franz Schubert. Stories flow from these random encounters, as a private and personalized experience generated among visitors, the singers and the art works in the space.

Sonic Blossom is first created by Lee Mingwei in 2013. Since then, it has been performed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Centre Pompidou in Paris and the Mori Art Museum in Japan, along with at a number of other establishments.

Performance details

24th September 2021 – 24th October 2021 (with the exception of the 7th October)

For more information, please visit the official website of the Ateneum Art Museum: https://ateneum.fi/en/exhibitions/lee-mingwei-sonic-blossom/

Media Contact

Amber Wu

Cultural Division of the Taipei Representative Office in the UK

Phone: +44 (0)20 7881 2675

Email: amber@moc.gov.tw