Maarit Bau Mustonen - K, on its side

K, on its side
Solo exhibition at Galleria K, the former main library of Vantaa (FI)
June 2026

A poem has many speakers
Recycled books
Diameter approx. 400 cm
2026

Yellowed, fragile, small, brand-new, heavy and otherwise diverse book-objects have returned to the floor of the former library’s reading room, arranged in a new formation, a spiral.

These open books, representing various literary genres and written in different languages, engage in a dialogue with one another whilst simultaneously forming a larger image. The work is composed of recycled, discarded and unwanted books that have been collected free of charge.

A poem has many speakers, 2026. Installation.

K, on its side, 2026. Exhibition view.

A poem has many speakers, 2026. Installation.

Kirjan edustalla on aukio – A town square faces the book
Artist’s book and installation (wall, books)
Graphic design by Katri Astala
English translation by Kasper Salonen
200 pages
Edition of 150
2026

Kirjan edustalla on aukio – A town square faces the book reimagines Galleria K, the former main library of Vantaa, in the form of a book.

Photographs taken in the empty gallery space conceal texts that weave together different phases of the building’s past: first as an important local library, later as a lively children’s art centre, and today as an art gallery. One of the inspirations for the work has been the artist’s own memories of a children’s choir that rehearsed in the space in the 1990s.

The work reconnects the building with books after forty years. It suggests that a building originally designed as a library has found a new life as a book held in the reader’s hands, one that now joins other books and, in doing so, becomes part of libraries again.

Kirjan edustalla on aukio – A town square faces the book, 2026. Artist's book.

Kirjan edustalla on aukio – A town square faces the book, 2026. Artist's book. Installation view.

Kirjan edustalla on aukio – A town square faces the book, 2026. Artist's book.

K, on its side, 2026. Exhibition view.

kesäkuun kevyenä kuutamoyönä kummitukset kikattelevat kuorossa
(on a light june moonlit night ghosts giggle in chorus)

Installation. Sheet music from my personal archive.
Approx. 410 x 30 cm
2026

kesäkuun kevyenä kuutamoyönä kummitukset kikattelevat kuorossa (on a light june moonlit night ghosts giggle in chorus), 2026. Installation.

a small bird / over the meadow / I sing to the clouds

With Olli Aarni
Sound
30 min
2026

The sound work references songs rehearsed in this space by a children’s choir, accompanied by piano, in the 1990s. Installed in one of the room’s built-in drawers.

If you would like to listen to the sound work, please get in touch.

a small bird / over the meadow / I sing to the clouds, 2026. Sound work in collaboration with Olli Aarni.

K, on its side, 2026. Exhibition view.

The space you are in was built for books. It carries a sense of the sacred. The chapel-like architecture reflects the value placed on knowledge. The aura of the works calls for quiet, air, and light – a space where access to knowledge and stories is shared equally. Time moves forward linearly, yet all its layers remain present at once, folded into the space, hidden in its surfaces and its scent.

A person enters the space. It still feels familiar, yet its proportions have shifted. Time spent here in the past lingers, but it is difficult to grasp the experience from this moment on. As a child, the space felt vast, monumental, filled with sound and colour. Now it seems smaller, yet light and silence make it feel almost endless. The city around the building has grown and continues to expand, and the experience of the space shifts with it: when passing by, when entering, when carrying one’s memories into it. Within built, material spaces, there are always spaces of memory. In everyday life, these overlap and merge into one another. The person folds the architecture and history of the space into the pages of the book – and between them.

Maarit Bau Mustonen’s past intertwines with the history of the building, both present in the exhibition. Fragmented memories of childhood choir rehearsals and coloured sheets of music. An art club, and the drawers that still remain, where works once stored. Everything is present and yet gone; the place is the same, and not the same.

A fleeting sense of being on the verge of something settles into sounds and arrangements. In the work, abandoned and unwanted books, as beings and bodies, carry time with them in the form of stains and yellowed pages. Layers of marks and meanings accumulate over the original structure. In the exhibition, material spaces and spaces of memory – imagined, built, and written places – meet. The walls enclose something that cannot be seen from the outside. Between the pages, things that are and are not fold into being. Art reveals and conceals inviting us to reach toward what remains out of sight. The invisible becomes perceptible as part of the structure of the space, forming within it and upon it, turning it into form and holding it still, if only for a moment , making it possible, briefly, to enter into conversation with its ghosts.

Anna Jensen
Curator, researcher, writer

Finnish Cultural Foundation, Grafia ry and Otto A. Malm’s Donation Fund have supported the exhibition.