identifying objects
Friday 24 July, 19:00
Saturday 25 July, 17:00
Venue: Forum Box, Ruoholahdenranta 3A, Helsinki
Duration approx. 2 h.
Suggested donation 10 € (at the door)
Performances:
Romeo Roxman Gatt, Calvin Z Laing,
Pauliina Sjöberg
Visual artists: Alexa Illi, Teo Paaer
A two-night performance programme and exhibition featuring works by Romeo Roxman Gatt, Calvin Z Laing, and Pauliina Sjöberg, with visual artists Alexa Illi & Teo Paaer. 𝘈𝘭𝘭 𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘮𝘢𝘯𝘤𝘦𝘴 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘰𝘯 𝘣𝘰𝘵𝘩 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘨𝘴!
The commissioned performances and the artworks in the space take as their starting point the relationship between performance, objects, and material reality. Through objects, the works explore the performativity of identity, masculinity, and parenthood. Everyday observations intertwine with emotionally charged storytelling—humour, anxiety, and the alter egos that emerge from them.
Working group and concept: Teo Paaer & Remi Vesala.
The event is supported by the Finnish Institute in the UK and Ireland.
PERFROMANCES:
Romeo Roxman Gatt: GRILLS GRILLS GRILLS (2026)
Duration: 14 min
In the installation and performance, Romeo Roxman Gatt approaches masculinity as a lived reality that is continually rehearsed and reshaped rather than fixed. His work begins with close observations of everyday gestures, rituals, behaviours, and social codes, tracing how masculinity is learned, embodied, and performed.
He transforms the gallery into a dystopian Maltese backyard BBQ, drawing on familiar objects, materials, and social settings such as white Monobloc chairs, chrome surfaces, a plastic table, an improvised grill, smoke, coal, and the rituals associated with "the boys," mechanics, and seaside gatherings. These elements are reconfigured into a fragmented stage set where domesticity, machinery, ritual, and the body begin to collapse into one another, blurring the boundaries between the everyday and the performative.
At the centre of the installation, a car hood is repurposed as a functioning grill, operating simultaneously as sculpture, altar, masculine emblem, and deteriorating body. The object merges ideas of inheritance, reproduction, labour, and danger, suggesting masculinity as something that reproduces itself mechanically through ritual and repetition.
Pauliina Sjöberg: Risky Play (2026)
Duration TBC
Performance installation Risky Play is an autofictional work that emerges from the embodied realities of parenthood and caregiving. A hybrid character inhabits the gallery space interacting with its surroundings. Sensory overstimulation, stagnation, and the shifting conditions produced by hormonal life reshape the character's sense of self: simultaneously caregiver and cared-for, the figure is unruly, reckless, and hungry for attention. The installation consists of large-scale objects and machine-like structures, combining elements of an alternative kink playspace, a children's playground, and a gym, bringing together sites for sensory exploration and testing of bodily boundaries.
Calvin Z Laing: Calvin & Bulk Times (2026)
Calvin & Bulk Times is a three-part performance that explores breakthrough, transformation, growth, self-forgiveness, empowerment, surprise, cringe, self-care and confidence. It navigates the awkwardness of masculinity and the constraints of binary identities, embracing vulnerability and play as tools for questioning how we present ourselves.
Looking back at the experience of growing up in the suburbs of Scotland, the work playfully examines the social structures that shape our lives: the promise of meritocracy, the illusion of endless striving, and the carrot that society forever dangles just out of reach. Through a lens of humour, discomfort and reflection: You’re Exactly Where You Need To Be.
The performance unfolds throughout, in and around the Forum Box gallery space. In addition to the performance, Calvin & Is This Really Happening, a seven-minute performance to camera, will be screened on a continuous loop throughout the event.