Juha valkeapää

Juha Valkeapää (b. 1967) is a vocal artist and performance maker with a 25-year long career of performances, installations, radio pieces and soundscapes – solos and various group works – vocal & sound & performance art, theatre, music, dance. The key elements of his art are voice / sound, presence, space and improvisation.

 

JV is more than a vocal artist and performance maker. The subject sets the form: most of his art is based on sound and performance, but if the subject demands a three-meter high wooden guy, he will sculpt one, and if it needs a book, he will write one. Wooden Guy is a sound sculpture. He performs with it in A Guy and a Wooden Guy. And he has written a booklet, with the same title, of the process of making it & other stuff.

 

JV likes DIY aesthetics, making and building things by himself, handicrafts. Well, he likes DIT too – doing things together. Some collaborations from the past and present: kesken, Houkka Bros., Biitsi, musicians Heikki Laitinen, Taito Hoffrén and Girilal Baars, performance makers Kaja Kann, Geert Vaes and Maija Hirvanen, sound designers Heidi Soidinsalo and Juhani Liimatainen, architect Kari Sivonen, visual artist Sándor Vály, sound poet Dirk Hülstrunk, and Mad House Helsinki – place for the performing arts.

 

JV thinks that making art is giving and sharing. In the most concrete way, this is manifested by food he has cooked in many of his performances, like Juha Biitsillä, Pelko/Fear, Executed Stories, A Guy and a Wooden Guy, Juha Valkeapää 50 yrs, Wanderer, 10 journeys to a place where nothing happens, It seems a good place to build a house.

 

JV has made vocal portraits since 1998, and thinks making a vocal portrait is a challenge, still.

 

At Circolo Scandinavo, Juha Valkeapää will start a new work that deals with water. It asks, what water needs.

 

More at www.juhavalkeapaa.net.

 

His stay at Circolo Scandinavo is supported by Arts Promotion Centre Finland.