Meet the artists

Are you curious about the artistic whirlwind of a journey that takes you through various worlds and spaces at our spring festivities? Do you want to get to know the artists behind the production? Here is the entire team behind Linking the (un)known – an Intercultural Art Experience.

Flux Cultural Association, with the creative forces Hamidreza Keshvarpajuh and Jens Heinström at the forefront, leads the intercultural team behind the art experience. Here you can read more about them.

Set design

Tina Čerpnjak is a computational designer holding a Master’s degree in architecture from Aalto University in Finland. Her expertise lies in generative design, digital fabrication, and exhibition design. Presently, she is engaged in research projects exploring data-driven design methods for dynamic urban landscapes, particularly within immersive design environments, leveraging Virtual and Mixed Reality technologies.

Her work, both individual and collaborative, has been showcased at prestigious venues such as the Venice Biennale, the National Design Centre Singapore, the Museum of Modern Art – EMMA, and the Helsinki Design Week. She is a member of Nasha Studio, a multidisciplinary art collective based in Helsinki, focused on audiovisual storytelling, design, and entertainment.  Alongside her creative endeavours, she also serves as a lecturer and research assistant at Aalto University, focusing on Computational Methodologies in Landscape Architecture and Urbanism.

Light design

Julia Jäntti is Helsinki based visual designer and artist. She holds a degree of Master of Arts (Theatre and Drama) in lighting design from the University of the Arts Helsinki. The final academic year Jäntti studied production design in Stockholms Konstnärliga Högskola, Master’s Programme for Film and Media. Jäntti has worked as a lighting-, set- and costume designer e.g. at Kom-theatre, Helsinki city theatre, Finnish National theatre, Oulu city theatre, Lappeenranta city theatre, Vaba Lava Tallinn and Kiasma.

Audio-visual installations

Monika Hauck is a Canadian/Polish new media artist, musician and VJ based in Helsinki. Her work includes digital manipulation of images to create surreal virtual landscapes related to memory and unreality. She creates immersive environs for live performances, festivals and installations. She is currently focused on developing techniques for optimizing immersive and interactive environments for installation and video based work.

She is also the co-founder of an audio-visual project, Static Channel, where she creates atmospheric soundscapes on synth and responsive live visuals. Hauck has exhibited work in Canada, Mexico and Finland. She is also the former Chairperson of DADA (Digital Art and Design Association) and Vice-Chair of TOKYO (Aalto ARTS Student Association). She is currently completing her MA in New Media Design and Production at Aalto University in Espoo, Finland.

Otso Kauniskangas is a musician, composer and new media artist currently studying music technology at Sibelius Academy. His main interests at the moment include generative audiovisual design.

Jonatan Snapir is a composer, instrumentalist and audiovisual artist from Helsinki, Finland. Currently studying music technology at Sibelius Academy, his work focuses on experimental electronic music and generative art.

Saku Liimatainen is a musical decathlete focused on electronic composition, music production and piano pedagogy.

Liimatainens roots in the field of art rely heavily on classical piano training, musical improvisation and curiosity to discover unconventional sources of sound. Besides his work as a solo artist and musician, he has taken part of many different projects and music groups with various artistic interests, ranging from classical music to experimental noise.

Currently he is studying Music Technology at Sibelius Academy and Piano Pedagogy at Metropolia University of Applied Sciences.

Host

Walter Öhman is a Helsinki based actor and scholar. He can paint, sing, act and dream . With an ambition to create and write new and progressive pieces he manages to keep his passion for acting as strong. Some would claim Walter is one of the few who has mastered the art of hosting. His talent to keep the consideration of his audience yet understand the context of the current allows for his comedic timing to be just. That. Precise.

Performance artists

Ronja Syvälahti is a humorous explorer, a softie with a punk attitude, working as a performer, dance maker, choreographer, and a newbie costume designer with a queer touch. Renowned for their ”organic dysfunctionality”, Syvälahti embraces themes of embarrassment, mistakes, and childlike consciousness. Through play with voice and objects, the artist and the surrounding materials become a part of scenography that is best described as an immersive space for the artist’s performance-self and the audience to inhabit, reflect and observe ones inner worlds. All with a hint of self-irony and fake-it-till-you-make-it i d e o l o g y.

Christy Ma is a performer, choreographer, and interdisciplinary artist from Hong Kong, currently based in Helsinki. She has attained her MA double degree at Uniarts Helsinki and Goethe University Frankfurt in Comparative Dramaturgy and Performance Research and BA at the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts in Contemporary Dance.

Her choreographies have been staged in Helsinki, Frankfurt, Hong Kong, China, and Malaysia. She has also worked with renowned dance companies such as City Contemporary Dance Company and Guangdong Modern Dance Company and was awarded the female solo Champion for the 2020 Seoul International Dance Competition. Driven by a desire to use the physical body to express one’s mind beyond words, Christy’s works often focus on the humanities in relation to social and political issues.

l’apharé (Raphaël Beau) is a performance artist based in Helsinki. His artistic practice, play and act from what is here, is the ground from which he makes performances. He explores performing in diverse contexts with a will for the performance to open multiple ways to be present in a place. His practice grows and accumulates layers by being implemented again and again in various locations. His performances are his practices at work, integrated into a score, implemented in the presence of an audience. They attempt to capture both the fleetingness and density of being here together in this place at this very moment.

Leik Silvestrini (b. 1995) is a Helsinki-based queer, non-binary artist from Oslo, Norway. With a deep curiosity for language, storytelling, and social relations, Leik’s multifaceted works emerge from everyday encounters and explore topics of normativity, trust, and care through humor, playfulness, and performativity. In the past years their practices have been centered around costumes, characters, and alternative narratives that enter existing situations in public and private space, attempting to dissolve dichotomies such as fiction/reality, human/animal, and stranger/friend.

Leik holds a BFA in Contemporary Art from the Art Academy of Bergen. At the moment they are pursuing an MFA in Time & Space Arts at the Fine Arts Academy of Helsinki.

Music act

Ni Jui Hsin (Zuiko) is a tsugarushamisen Player from Taiwan. Began studying Shamisen in 2015, specializing in the use of Japan’s Tsugaru Shamisen. Combines elements of Japanese traditional folk, pop, rock, and  original compositions. 

Currently enrolled in the Global Music department at the Sibelius Academy in  Finland, aiming to integrate musical elements from around the world and  develop a new style of Shamisen music.

Sara Majidi Nejad, a passionate performer and  improviser, transcends borders and genres in her musical journey.  Hailing from Iran, she is a skilled Qanun and Piano player, as well as a  composer. She graduated from the Tehran Music Conservatory,  specializing in Iranian Music Performance, particularly in performing  Qanun. Currently, she is engaged in advanced studies at the Sibelius  Academy – Global Music Department in Helsinki, Finland, further honing  her craft. While her expertise lies in Persian  music, Sara’s artistic exploration extends far beyond, as she seeks to  bridge her own musical culture with Middle Eastern and Balkan music.  Enjoying connections between different musical styles, she constantly  seeks new ways to blend genres and create music  that resonates with people from diverse backgrounds.

Typewriting act

Eugenie Touma van der Meulen (they/she) is an artist, friend, reader, writer, lover, maker, doer, dreamer, encourager, poet, baker, justice-seeker, creative-thinker, kindness-spreader. Eugenie’s work explores longing, belonging, and the meaning of home. Currently, Eugenie is thinking about the intergenerational grief and pain they are living with as a Palestinian-Armenian, that is now highly activated due to current events. How to create through that, when even survival feels unfair? They wish to create a space for people to come together and listen, be a part of their thoughts, and feel less alone.

Daniil Kozlov (who uses the nom de plume Susinukke Kosola) is a Russian-born literary jack of all trades. He has written four collections of poetry and created a bunch of 3D-printed poetic objects. Kozlov is also broadly active in Finnish poetry circles; he is known for his live poetry performances, for founding a small publishing house called Kolera, and for being the originator and editor-in-chief of online national poetry critique portal Runografi. In addition to all these projects, Kozlov teaches creative writing at the University of Turku. He has also occasionally been paid for his work.

Assistant to light designer

Laura Walden is a first year lighting design student at the University of the Arts Helsinki. She has worked as a freelance lighting designer and technician since 2022. At the moment her main interest is immersive and interactive art.

Take me back to the main page of the event.