Armonviitta (Mantle of Mercy) is a video installation for Kamppi Chapel in Helsinki, created in collaboration by Moisander & Rajakangas. The work refers to Christian iconography, specifically the Western Mater Misericordiae and the Eastern Pokrov traditions, in which the Virgin Mary spreads her mantle over the community as protection. The installation re-reads this tradition and asks what shelter, community and the sacred can mean in our time.

The architecture, form, materials and acoustics of church spaces are designed to make them places of the sacred. Church spaces are built for encounters with the sacred. The closing and repurposing of such spaces is a widespread phenomenon, and it caught our attention. What happens to the sacred when the purpose of a space is redefined? Is it possible to dismantle the sacred from a space whose form and function have been dedicated to it?

The use of Kamppi Chapel for church services may come to an end

At the end of 2026, it remains uncertain whether Kamppi Chapel will continue to be used for church services. This uncertainty is the starting point of the Armonviitta installation. A space built for shelter and encounter may lose its official role, but not necessarily the way people have learned to be in it. Here the sacred is not a quality that either is or is not present in a space. It emerges in relation to the meanings of the space and to the material and communal ties attached to it, through the meaning the community has given the place. A church space asks those who enter for attention, for slowing down, for pausing. When its original frame recedes or changes, this relationship is left open.

“We work with the space through visual and sonic materiality. In this encounter, the space can be experienced in ways that cannot be reduced to the meanings attached to it. In our way of working, the space becomes a third collaborator: its architecture and acoustics guide how the work takes shape,” Moisander and Rajakangas say.

Juhana Moisander is a visual artist whose practice centres on questions of place, space, material and perception. He works across the field of visual art, with moving image and spatial works. In Moisander’s work, architecture, environment and material reality often serve as starting points for an exploration of perception and experience.

Hanna Rajakangas is a sound designer, sound artist and artistic researcher whose practice centres on questions of sound, space, listening and embodied experience. Acoustic environments, the characteristic resonance of spaces and site-specific work often serve as starting points for works that explore the relationships between sound, presence and the experience of space.

Come and see the impressive ‘Armonviitta’ installation at Kamppi Chapel!

Armonviitta will be on display during the chapel’s opening hours until 28 November 2026.

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