As part of the performative installation Don’t thank for the food, taking place November 7th & 8th at Caisa, Antonia Atarah and her working group have invited young BIPOC visual artists to present their work in Caisa’s Gallery through an open call.
Atarah’s performative installation is a utopian living room created by and for BIPOC communities – a space of home, dreams, joy, nurture and rest. The works in the gallery enter into dialogue with this setting, expanding its meanings.
The artists exhibiting in the gallery are: Iida Valmé, kemelo sehlapelo, Selma Mataich, Shaghayegh Ansari, Victor Miyano and Vivian WONG Wing Lam. Together, the artists have chosen the exhibition title:
A body, many homes:
from the ground to the earth, we low flying and have travelled far…
Iida Valmé (all pronouns) is a Finnish-Haitian-American queer multidisciplinary artist with an international practice currently based in Helsinki. Love is at the center of their practice. Valmé’s existence and expression is a direct homage to their ancestors, a declaration of love to those whose ancestor they will one day be. Their work and creative process draw power from their community, nature, intuition, and the spiritual realm. Currently Valmé is completing their MFA at the Academy of Fine Arts in the Sculpture Department, where they are focusing on expanding their toolkit for artistic expression. From filmmaking and writing to performance and sculpting, Valmé continues to learn through joy and play.
Name of exhibited work: The Ancestors
Year of completion: 2024
Technique: Sculpture, raw east african clay
Dimensions: Two 20 x 25 x 7 cm sculptures
Photo credits: Helmi Padatsu (right)
kemelo nozipho sehlapelo is South African, African, a medley of IsiZulu, Sesotho, and Ndebele & a medley of all the places and spaces they have touched. She likes to play with this language and its inherent failure (writes). They like to conjure ancestral AND diasporic reckoning on european soil, and likes to access that knowledge through aliveness of body and spirit, on African soil (dances). They are based wherever their root chakra is, which for now, is in Frankfurt, germany. [This will update regularly.]
Name of exhibited work: a Native Princess sitting Pretty
Year of completion: 2026
Medium: Video (dance, performance)
Photo credits: Georg Kronenberg (left) Merthe Wulf (right)
Selma Mataich is an Iraqi-Moroccan designer and visual artist based in Helsinki, currently completing her studies at Aalto University’s School of Arts, Design and Architecture. At the core of her practice is the exploration of relationships between the body, objects, and the environment, and clothing and textile work has served as the primary means for her artistic expression. Her works are built on layered meanings and material sensitivity, where the personal and the collective intertwine. In this way, she creates entities that open up space for reflecting on one’s relationship to the self, to others, and to the surrounding world.
Name of exhibited work: Goldilocks
Year of completion: 2025
Technique, material: Blown glass, sublimation, synthetic hair
Dimensions: 40 x 12 x 8 cm
Photo credits: Adele Hyry (left)
Shaghayegh Ansari is an Iranian interdisciplinary artist, based in Helsinki. She holds a Bachelor’s and a Master’s in directing from the University of Tehran, and her second Master’s in Live Art and Performance Studies from the University of the Arts Helsinki. At the core of her work is storytelling. She creates site-specific pieces that weave together memory, speculation and care, often engaging participants directly. By using feminist methodologies and archival thinking, she treats the body and space as active sites where histories, emotions, and power relations become visible. Through performance, video, text, participatory installations, and collective encounters, her work seeks to challenge hegemonic structures while opening spaces for dialogue, imagination, and transformation.
Name of exhibited work: Tell Me a Story From Before I Can Remember
Year of completion: 2025
Technique, materials: Textile, ink
Photo credits: Elis Hannikainen (left), Tangmo Tualek (right)
Victor Miyano (宮野ビクター) is a Japanese Brazilian sociologist and storyteller. He holds a bachelor’s degree in international relations from the University of São Paulo and is currently pursuing a master’s degree in education at the University of Helsinki. His work moves between photography, filmmaking, and poetry, often using autoethnography to explore themes of migration, identity, and collective memory. Drawing from decolonial approaches, Miyano believes in the power of multiple and counter-narratives as acts of rebellion against homogeneity and normativity. His practice elaborates on personal and inherited experiences of resisting the broken frameworks of modernity, progress, and development upon which our realities are built.
Miki Nii (新井実希) is a Japanese-North American based in Osaka, Japan. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Human Sciences from the University of Osaka. A practitioner of the arts and social sciences, her work focuses on the intersections between militarism, environmental degradation, and social alienation. Her curiosities lie in the following questions: How are we grounded and alienated by our natural and built environments? To what extent is “belonging” a state of mind, and to what extent is it determined by dominant structures? Can colonized and commercialized places be transformed into sites of healing?
Name of exhibited work: Carta nº 1 a Keizō / Letter no. 1 to Keizō
Directed by: Victor Miyano (宮野ビクター) and Miki Nii (新井実希)
Year of completion: 2025 – Ōsaka, Japan
Language: Brazilian Portuguese, Japanese, English subtitles
Medium: Video documentary
Length: 13 min 13 sec
Photo credits: Antonio Salueña (middle), Tomomi Shibukawa (right)
Vivian WONG Wing Lam is an interdisciplinary artist who utilizes performance and moving imagery as her primary mediums. Wong explores the interconnectedness of the individual body, collective experience, and the ethics of power through poetic creation, documentation, and cross-disciplinary experimentation. Her work examines the body as a field and symbol, carrying and resisting societal states of aphasia. She holds a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Hong Kong, and is pursuing a Master’s degree in Live Art and Performance Studies at Uniarts Helsinki.
Name of exhibited work: All Things Wise and Wonderful
Year of completion: 2024
Medium: Double channel performative video
Photo credits: