Wey Dey Move: Remember Dancing Cosmologie

Dele Adeyemo

Museum of Impossible Forms, Helsinki
9 October - 9 November 2025

SLOW

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Dele Adeyemo is a Scottish / Nigerian artist, architect, and critical urban theorist based in London and Lagos. Dele’s research and creative practice address the architectures of racial capitalism and the contemporary lifeworlds that exist in their midst. Paying tribute to the radical acts of everyday Black life in Africa and the diaspora through drawing, film, sculpture and installation design, Dele’s projects trace the contours of Black socialities through their embodied cultures of movement and their circulation to mobilise what he calls—the Black radical spatial imaginary. Dele’s works have been exhibited at the 18th Venice Architecture Biennale (2023), the 13th International Architecture Biennale of Sao Paulo (2022), the 5th Istanbul Design Biennial (2020), and the 2nd Edition of the Lagos Biennial (2019). Most recently he has presented the solo exhibitions, Licor-Mãe (2023) at Sismógrafo, Porto; Residues of the Sweet Purge (2023) at Capel da Boa Viagem Funchal; and Wey Dey Move (2022) at Het Nieuwe Instituut, Rotterdam.

Artworks and space design Dele Adeyemo
Curated and produced Micol Curatolo
Co-produced Valge Kuup Studio
Public program Lagos Studio Archives and Ama Kyei
Printing Kiu Kangatrüki Stuudio
Woodwork Paul Flanders
AV equipment NASHA and Kunstventures
Thanks Giovanna Esposito Yussif, David Muñoz Alcántara, Berit Teeäär, Jaana Jüris, Asko Linno, Mattias Veller, Hermes Chibueze Iyele, Jesse Ukkonen, Teemu Lehmusruusu, Andre Vicentini, Matilda Järvi, Totti Korpua, SOLU BioArt Society, PUBLICS, Martina Šerešová, Wanda Holopainen
Funded by Kone Foundation
Photographic documentation Yelyzaveta Babaieva

The exhibition ‘The Price of Bloom’ traces the journey of the fruit sold in Finnish grocery shops back to the south of Spain in Murcia, where large quantities of fruit are produced for the European market. The artist Myriam Gras follows the work of local peach farmers who narrate how the landscape and horticulture have been transformed by the expansion of agricultural technologies, the taste of consumers elsewhere, and the impact of climate change.

Known as “Europe’s Greenhouse”, since the 1970s, Murcia has been transformed from a deserted area into one of Spain’s most economically thriving regions. This was once established by the efforts of small family-owned farms. Today, the landscape is dominated by the economic and physical infrastructures of monoculture and ‘plasticulture’ – cultivation maximised under the controlled environment of large greenhouses.

Centred around the peach tree, the exhibition focuses on the network of workers, businesses and knowledges that act around fruit production. The peach tree embodies and resists these contradictions. Its pink bloom nestles between asphalt roads and the opaque luminescence of greenhouse plantations. Too sensitive to grow under mechanised conditions, the peach requires extensive manual labour and the development of new ways of knowing. Its flowers become a symbol of the potential worth of the harvest, and a metaphor – hidden behind the aesthetic expectations of global consumerism – of the rupture between production methods and environmental knowledge.

The public program invites initiatives based in Finland working on community-based agriculture, workers’ rights, and urban gardening. The exhibition hosts their practices to understand the impact that the agricultural industry has across locations. With their experiences, we learn about more sustainable and fair relations to land use, food production and consumption.

The exhibition is part of SLOW — Seasonal Laboratories for Other Worlds — a series of exhibitionary workspaces for collective laboring and alternative connections between bodies, places, and economies. Curated by Micol Curatolo with the Museum of Impossible Forms. Supported by Koneen Säätiö. Visual identity by Pauliina Nykanen.

The artistic and curatorial practice of Myriam Gras (she/her) is concerned with what is considered valuable in the transformative moment that constitutes the present. Tracing infrastructural ramifications - through fieldwork, systemic thinking and interdisciplinary collaborations - she identifies how underlying scales, time and meanings simultaneously unfold and intertwine, while subject to ecological, social and economic shifts and uncertainties. www.myriamgras.com
 
Micol Curatolo is an art worker, curator and producer based in Finland. Her interest lies at the intersection of border politics, contemporary art, feminist and antiracist work. Her research addresses questions around geography, labour, and migration. Often working collaboratively, Micol's practice questions participation and presents processes, politics and aesthetics of constructing a sense of place. www.micolcuratolo.com
 
Verimarja is a collective of activists and volunteers supporting Thai workers in the Finnish berry industry, which has relied on pickers from Thailand since 2005. According to the National Bureau of Investigation, the ongoing human trafficking investigations may affect 2,000 Thai berry pickers. The court case is still ongoing, with the workers waiting for justice while many continue to travel to Finland for seasonal work under low compensation and serious deficiencies in the conditions for berry picking work. www.instagram.com/verimarja.fi/

Groovink is a printing studio active in Helsinki since 2011, run by Gabriele Marotta. The main printing technique is screen printing with water-based inks. Focusing on sustainability, Groovink uses the smallest amount of reusables and generates as little waste as possible. Gabriele likes sharing the printing process outside the studio, where audiences can learn more about this technique. www.groovink.com
 
Dodo ry is a Finnish environmental NGO. Dodo addresses environmental issues through community work, inviting city dweller to embrace sustainable lifestyles. Their base of operations is Kääntöpöyö (Revolving Desk) at the Pasila Old Train Station in Helsinki, and at Dammisaaren Rapumaja in Hupisaari, Oulu. www.dodo.org
 
Joss Allen can be found in the garden, amongst the weeds and compost heaps. He is an artworker and researcher interested in how art influences ecological ways of being and matters of care in more-than-human worlds. Their work has been influenced by his time as a support worker for adults with autism, a labourer on an organic farm and a refuse collector, among others. In 2017-20, Joss was the project coordinator for the Town is the Garden, a three-year creative community food-growing project run by Deveron Projects. Recently, he was co-artistic director of ATLAS Arts, Isle of Skye, Scotland with Yvonne Billimore. Joss is currently doing doctoral research with the Glasgow Seed Library on tending to seeds. He lives in Helsinki.

Paratiisin Hedelmät is a project developed by Juha Solantie who, through long-term study, expert connections, and systematic experimentation, is growing specialty fruit trees in the current climate of the south coast of Finland. Peaches, apricots, pears have grown in Paratiisin Hedelmät’s garden in Pirkkola, Helsinki. They provide expertise and compact fruit trees suitable for small yards or balconies at a sliding-scale price. www.paratiisinhedelmat.fi

Ruby van der Wekken considers herself a member of the Global Justice Movement, is a producing member of Oma Maa Food cooperative in Finland and works as a team member for RIPESS Europe. Ruby has been active in process around community currency (Helsinki Timebank), solidarity economy building & the commons and has worked previously for the Siemenpuu foundation, an environmental foundation with partners in the global south working in the context of Finnish development cooperation. www.omamaa.fi
 
Alejandra Alarcón is an interdisciplinary artist working at the intersection of food and art. Alarcón uses cake as a medium to create Edible Landscapes—sculptures layered with flavour and meaning. They are always inspired by a specific location and context, often taking the form of treats to be enjoyed communally while discovering new flavours and reflecting on personal and shared experiences of conviviality. www.ediblelandscapes.cargo.site

We are delighted to host for the first time in Helsinki, acclaimed Black feminist writer, researcher, and organizer Lola Olufemi. 

Olufemi’s lecture and workshop explored the uses of the political imagination as it relates to crisis, cultural work and the archival material of radical social movements. Her work prompted us to learn from the material and visual cultures of feminist, Black, and leftist organising. Olufemi has urged us to "take feeling seriously intellectually," to nurture a materialist approach to political imagination, and search a rupture in our political aesthetics against pessimism.  

From Olufemi's thinking, we gathered poetics and intellectual strategies to imagine and believe that another world is possible: connecting objects, actions and feelings across and against time; living against predictability; reanimating images and texts; rehearsing and repeating; repairing our connections to others; trying over and again. Bridging research, writing and activism, Olufemi narrates the aesthetics of a liberation stemming from the coalition of many routes and struggles.

This event marks the inaugural gathering of SLOW — Seasonal Laboratories for Other Worlds — a series of exhibitionary workspaces for collective laboring, anti-capitalist dreaming, and building connections between bodies, places, and economies through art. Curated by Micol Curatolo in collaboration with the Museum of Impossible Forms, SLOW offers a framework for resisting capitalist temporality and exploring alternative ways of being and organizing.

In 2025, SLOW was funded by Koneen Säätiö. 


Read Lola Olufemi's interview with AK Wane on NO NIIN Magazine, Issue 31, August 2025.

Dr. Lola Olufemi is a black feminist writer and Stuart Hall foundation researcher from London who recently completed her doctorate at the Centre for Research and Education in Art and Media at the University of Westminster. Her work focuses on the uses of the political imagination and its relationship to cultural production, political demands and futurity. Olufemi is the author of Feminism, Interrupted: Disrupting Power (Pluto Press, 2020), and Experiments in Imagining Otherwise (Hajar Press, 2021). Her work bridges activism and theory, advocating for abolitionist politics, reproductive justice, and community-led organizing. She is a member of 'bare minimum', an interdisciplinary anti-work arts collective. Olufemi’s forthcoming publication Against Literature will be available in 2026.

DJ Wekesa is a Helsinki based dj and a dancer. In their sets they play amapiano, afrobeats, dancehall, hip hop, r&b and queer anthems. Wekesa is a socially skillful dj, who can read the dancefloor while serving surprises and their own strong artistic view. Throughout their DJ career they have given their input for safer space practices to the Helsinki club scene.