PAULA LEHTONENThe Pig Bliss 18.4.2026 – 17.5.2026

The Pig Bliss (2026) is a video work that features as a one-room installation in my exhibition at Galleria Heino. It follows the lives of former farm animals, pigs Lempi, Lyyti and Paavo, that now live at the Saparomäki farm animal sanctuary. Another species, a human being, works in the background as a provider of care and safety. At Saparomäki, the pigs graze in the meadow and enjoy mud baths, scratches and lullabies. There they get to live into old age – unlike their fellow farm animals at industrial production facilities. The work shows a species most commonly seen as a meat product through an empathetic lens. It depicts care and coexistence between humans and animals founded on love and respect.


The Pig Bliss is the final part of the animal trilogy I have worked on over the past five years. In this series of video works, I have explored relationships between humans and animals from the perspectives of communication, gaze and care. The first part of the trilogy, a work about the communication between Morrison the alpaca and humans, Morrison & Friends (2021), premiered at Galleria Heino in autumn 2022. Morrison & Friends was also shown as part of the Helsinki Art Museum HAM joint exhibition Who is an Animal? (2024), and its festival premiere was held at the DocPoint festival in Helsinki in 2022. The second part of the trilogy, Guests of Honor (2024), which depicts chickens as dinner guests, was shown at Galleria Heino in December 2024. The work has also toured festivals in other countries, such as the Netherlands (Leiden Shorts 2024), Sweden (Uppsala Short Film Festival 2024) and Germany (Kasseler Dokfest 2024). Guests of Honor will next be shown at the Salo Art Museum’s Sivuraide gallery in summer 2026. 



Paula Lehtonen


Paula Lehtonen (b.1983) is a media artist whose works deal with environmental issues and humans’ relationship with nature in a time overshadowed by ecological disaster. For Lehtonen, art is a way to deal with the anxiety caused by the current state of nature on our planet and the unsustainability of our modern lifestyles; it is also a method for imagining new perspectives to build a reality that is more sustainable for many different organisms. Paula Lehtonen graduated with a Master of Arts from Aalto University in 2013. Since 2009, she has also worked as a freelance video designer in numerous theatre productions, most recently Toinen tasavalta (The Second Republic) at the Finnish National Theater. Lehtonen is also known as the video jockey vj Vixen. Lehtonen’s video works have been screened at several film festivals and are included in various collections, such as those of the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma (Finnish National Gallery) and the Jenny and Antti Wihuri Foundation.

The implementation of the work has been supported by AVEK, the Arts Promotion Centre Finland and the Olga and Vilho Linnamo Foundation.