Terike Haapoja

The winner of this year’s ANTI Festival International Prize for Live Art is the New York based Finnish artist Terike Haapoja.  

Haapoja works through writings, political interventions and installations, and uses media, techniques and technologies that are often associated with science. Her work speaks with a strong and clear voice that challenges the ways we think about ourselves in relation to others - to non-humans – to deconstruct dehumanising rhetorics and imagine a world beyond the hierarchies of western modernism. Intersections between art and science may be inevidencable when covering subjects like the diversity of the ecosystem and boundaries between humans and all else. The Museum of Nonhumanity (September 2016), a collaboration with Laura Gustafsson, was an exhibition space dedicated to the investigation of othering.

“Moments of pain and confrontation in both private and political life have been turning points for my art making: when there’s an urgency that forces you to create something new, because none of the things you know are useful anymore. I think politically we are in this point today. I hope for a change that would make the world safer in all aspects, so that it was possible to be open to others, to change, to love and pain, to celebrate difference and sameness. Politically speaking, I think that comes through supporting movements of black woman leadership, indigenous knowledge and queer and trans activism that in different ways challenge the coercive, fear-driven patriarchal leadership of today.” - Terike Haapoja

Terike Haapoja is the first Finnish Artist to win the ANTI Festival International Prize for Live Art. Launched in 2014, ANTI is the only international prize for Live Art, offering an award worth €30,000.  

Categories: Featured Artist

Date Posted: 16 November 2016