The School of Political Performance (SPP, School of Political Performance) and New Performance Turku Biennale announce the participants of their joint international residency. Nine artists from Ukraine and Finland will work in Turku from 12–30 October 2026. The Ukrainian part of the programme will be hosted by Garage33 Gallery-Shelter in Kyiv in November.
The residency will take place from 12 to 30 October 2026 at Manillan Tehdas in Turku. Over three weeks, the participants will work together, exploring performance as a tool for artistic expression, interaction, and political reflection. The programme approaches the political as a daily practice of presence, care, and embodied action: lectures, workshops, collective practices, open rehearsals, meetings with curators and local institutions, and sessions of collective reflection. It is a non-hierarchical environment in which the group itself shapes its way of working together.
The curatorial framework is developed by Leena Kela (New Performance Turku) and Maria Kulikovska (School of Political Performance), together with invited curators Giovanna Esposito Yussif, Satu Herrala, and Farbod Fakhrazadeh (Titanik / Titanik AiR), all based in Finland.
On October 30 2026, the School of Political Performance × New Performance Turku residency will conclude with Performance & Pizza, a public presentation at Manilla Factory (Vanha Viinatehdas) in Turku.
Participants
AntiGonna (Ukraine / Paris), Oleksandr Halishchuk (Ukraine / Graz), Tetiana Kornieieva (Ukraine), Maria Kulikovska (Ukraine), Stanislava Ovchinnikova (Ukraine / Finland), Katri Kainulainen & Maximilian Latva (Finland), Moe Mustafa (Finland), Onur Tayranoğlu (Finland)
Where SPP Came From
The idea for SPP developed between 2014 and 2016, when, following the occupation of Crimea and the beginning of the war in Donbas, Maria Kulikovska experienced the loss of her home both as a personal loss and as a political condition. The outrage, anger, and frustration of displacement were shared by thousands of people left without representation, without a place, without a home.
“I wanted to build a school of political performance, but a school not as a place where people are taught, but as a place where people support one another. Where you invest in people, in strength, in support, in sisterhood, and where you know that you will be supported and not forgotten, not left behind like some used old thing.
I was thinking about the agora. About the Athenian school, where people and philosophers gathered. About Diogenes, who walked around with a lantern in broad daylight looking for a human being, a real human being. This is what I needed very deeply at the time. And this is what we all still need today.”
— Maria Kulikovska, founder of the School of Political Performance
About
School of Political Performance (SPP) is a free art movement founded by Maria Kulikovska and registered in Kyiv as an NGO since 2017. SPP works through performances, actions, exhibitions, non-violent artistic gestures, and hybrid, transdisciplinary, and experimental forms of visual art. Among the artist’s early actions from which the School’s method emerged are 254 — an unauthorised performance at the Hermitage during the opening of the first public day of Manifesta 10; participation in #onvacation (2015) in the Russian-occupied pavilion at the 56th Venice Biennale, organised by the IZOLYATSIA contemporary art centre; White (2015) — washing the flag of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea in the Moscow River; Flowers of Democracy (2015) — casts of the vulvas of women and activists, placed in public spaces, primarily in locations where architecture speaks in a phallic or patriarchal language; and Crimea Raft: Parliament of All Displaced Persons — a social sculpture and performance on an inflatable rescue raft.
Garage33, Gallery-Shelter is an independent space in Kyiv and the home of the School of Political Performance. Together with SPP, it is a project of Studio-Home Maria Kulikovska (Studio Maria Kulikovska).
Support
The School of Political Performance × New Performance Turku project is implemented within the framework of the ZMINA: Resilience project, with the support of the IZOLYATSIA Foundation (Ukraine) and Malý Berlín (Slovakia), with the participation of the Trans Europe Halles network (Sweden), and co-funded by the European Union’s Creative Europe Programme.
Co-funded by the European Union. The views and opinions expressed in this material are solely those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.