Juha Valkeapää

Ollaan eläimiksi! / Animal beings, 2025
Performances at the art museum

Sat. 20 September at 3 p.m. 
Sat. 10 January 2026 at 3 p.m. 
Sun. 11 January 2026 at 3 p.m.
The performance, in Finnish and/or English, is suitable for viewers of all ages. 

Animal beings is a wordless and spoken performance by Juha Valkeapää that invites us to reflect, imagine and experiment with being in the world from the perspective of other species of animals. In the performance, Valkeapää's voice, body and movement, as well as the artwork's poems, performance instructions and soundscapes spread across different rooms, transforming the art museum space into a performance stage. 

With its light and playful approach, Animal beings  turns our gaze to other animals and to how all living and non-living things are connected to each other and dependent on each other's actions. The body of the work consists of non-verbal and verbal vocalizations, as well as performance instructions, which Valkeapää implements together with the audience. Most of the poems in the performance are from Eeva Kilpi's collection  Animalia, in addition to texts by Anni Kytömäki, Sirpa Kyyrönen, Henriikka Tavi, and Eva Meijer's work  Animal Languages.  

Juha Valkeapää is a sound artist and performance artist from Helsinki, born in Kuopio in 1967. During his career spanning over 30 years, he has created performances, installations and radio works of various forms, sounds and looks in different parts of the world. The key elements of his art are sound, presence, playfulness, improvisation, and live contact with the audience.