1.4.–26.4.2026

Handmade Books Exhibition

Handmade Books Exhibition at Helsinki Central Library Oodi brings together artist books and experimental publications that understand the book as a bodily, shared action rather than just an object to read. The exhibition focuses on small editions instead of unique works and highlights diverse techniques and approaches, often playful and low-cost ways of making and publishing books where materials and methods are part of the meaning. These books invite touch, movement, rearrangement, and time. Leporellos, loose pages, boxes, punched holes, and open bindings turn reading into navigation, making the book a space and reading a physical act. Embodiment is not only a theme but a condition of how these works are made and experienced.


Across the exhibition, books function as sites of conceptual exploration, dialogue, memory, and anarchistic approaches. They explore personal and collective histories such as family, homecoming, everyday rituals, inherited gestures, and found objects alongside broader concerns like community, activism and care. Simple, recycled, and found materials carry political weight without proclamation. Slowness, craft, and analog processes resist the efficiency and automation of digital platforms. Together, these books ask what is worth keeping, sharing, and passing on, and show how publishing can be a communal, intentional, and embodied practice.


The books were selected from an international open call that received nearly 600 submissions, with 43 works chosen for the exhibition from Finland to Japan, Taiwan, Malaysia, Indonesia, Canada, and across Europe, showcasing the vibrant and global practice of contemporary handmade publishing. After the exhibition, the selected works will be donated to the public collection of the Rikhardinkatu Library Artist’s Book Collection.



The exhibition is curated by Natalia Kopkina and Hikari Nishida, Helsinki-based artists and publishers whose practices span artist-run publishing, collective projects, and experimental approaches to books as visual and social forms.

✦ Opening ✦
Tuesday 31.3.2026
19:00–21:00

Pixel Pulp (2025), Sara Blosseville (FI/FR)

SpineScapes (2024), Olga Pipnik (RU/ES)

Growing Album (2025), Ewelina Bialoszewska (PL/DE)

Ricette memorabili (2025), Ombretta Gamberale (IT)

Living in a Dollhouse (2024), Wing Ki Shek (HK/EE)

Who Keeps Our Memories (2025), Mika Otsuki (JP)

glasses (2025), Shu Yee Ng (MY)

Sem X, Y e Z (2025), Marta Guerra Belo (PT)

Best Comes in Pairs (2023), Tiffany Wong (ID)

Under the Microscope (2023), Vivian Fischer (DE)

Cherries (2023), Kateryna Lesiv (UA/FI)

Small Light (2025), Mio Ito (JP)

Oggetti d’affezione (Objects of affection) (2025), Yoichi Ishida (JP/GB)

The Thirty-Two Physical Characteristics of the Buddha (2024), Brent Nakamoto (US)

Moment (2025), Weiwei Wu (CN/JP)

Slider-Man (2023), Manuel Boden (DE/PT)

Under her tall, white hat (2025), Oline Nordengaard (DE/NL)

Have you ever seen tears on a petal? (2024), PI DAN (CN/JP)

Gone Woman (2024), IPO IPO (JP)

Temporada de Manzanas (Apple Season) (2024), Francisco Macfarlane (AR/DE)

The Disagreement Libraries_Black to White (2024), Victoire Coustilieres (FR/NL)

Bread & Bones (2025), Alma Teer (NL)

Fijn Volkoren (2025), Mara Piccione (NL)

Tactics of (re)claiming space (2025), Aga Grzemski (PL/BE)

Nemesis (2025), Oliver Maarup, Nanna Anna (DK)

Odds & Ends - Chapter 1: confetti (2023), /ræk+ŋ4/ (CA)

Hot Metal Cold Type (2025), Maciej Przyłęcki (PL/GB)

If you want to live to 100 years, Join my Tai Chi class for beginners (2025), Yinying Hu (CN/GB)

Research notes (2025), Jamie Smyth (IE/FI)

MEOPTA Enlarger Archive (2025), Joshua Cockroft (GB/FI)

From Leipzig to Tokyo (2024), Coco Dahlke (DE)

Apollo (2025), Joel Hilska-Heikkinen (FI)

Amoeba (2025), Iina Esko (FI)

Roman (2025), Jani Anders Purhonen (FI)

Perfect Lovers (Untitled) (2024), Yamu Wang (TW)

Are You Comfortable Yet? (2025), Em—Dash Studio (ID/UK)

Cheaply and with Dignity (2024), Gaba Palicka (PL)

Ornamental Patterns III (2026), Julia Syrzistie (PL/FI)

One Hundred Views of Mano Screen Printing (2025), Masaco Kuroda (JP)

Panasonic C-700AF (2018), Antti Nylén (FI)

(etäisyys)/Mikä palautti ruumiin(vastaisuuden varalle) (2025), Taru Samola (FI)

MONOCHROM I (2025), Michal Czinege (SK/FI)

eye against eye, 1 (2025), William Denis (BE/GB)