But Gunilla, some things you simply just don’t say

Swedish Asshole might bring the audience into a scream-cry-laugh situation. Provocative, unrestrained, and absurd, the creation works for its makers Johanna Karlberg, Antonia Atarah, and Alen Nsambu as a character, a mindset, and an artistic practice with the motto “art is easy, anything can be art”—vouching for artistic freedom. Three shapeshifting antagonists with both inferiority complexes and delusions of grandeur struggle their ways to win, be seen, and heard the most. A sweetly singing quartet’s heartbreaking harmonies rise up into the skies. Swedish Asshole reveals a delusion about immunity, whiteness, and the need of belonging. It is a landscape in which the cultural identity of Swedish speaking Finns as a liminal space rules; caught somewhere between east and west, the Finnish and the Swedish.

Swedish Asshole premiered in March 2026 in Teater Viirus and returns now to take the stage in Caisa.

Johanna Karlberg is a Helsinki-based choreographer, performer and performance maker whose work is rooted in embodiment and dance practices. She graduated from the contemporary dance program at Riveria Outokumpu in 2016 and the Master’s Programme in Dance Performance at the University of the Arts Helsinki’s Theatre Academy in 2022; she has been active across the Finnish art scene since 2017. She has worked as a performer and collaborator with choreographers Sonya Lindfors, Suvi Kemppainen, and Heli Keskikallio, as well as visual artist Venla Helenius; as a dance teacher for children and adults with intellectual disabilities; and as a curator and facilitator for UrbanApa, an anti-racist and feminist art platform. Karlberg’s artistic projects include Lesbo Erotics – The Garden Party (2023 and 2024), a series of performative garden parties held in the Lapinlahti garden as part of Helsinki Pride. In 2025–2026, she is working on a lesbian DIY contemporary musical trilogy in collaboration with Iiris Laakso.

At the core of Karlberg’s artistic work are questions about representation, hierarchies, social relationality and POV; how identity and actions are inevitably entangled. Her work is often characterized by performativity, transgression and expressive corporeality. She is fascinated and inspired by the simultaneously limited and boundless condition of the body, ugliness and monstrosity.

Antonia Atarah is a Ghanaian-Finnish freelance actor, artist, and pedagogue with a master’s degree from the acting program of Uniarts Helsinki’s Theatre Academy, with additional studies in musical theatre and internship in Accra, Ghana. In addition to her debut leading role in Ronja, the Robber’s daughter at Svenska Teatern, Atarah has worked across diverse performing art forms, methods, and collectives in Finland, Germany, Ghana, and Tanzania. She has explored decolonial and feministic performing approaches in pieces such as Armageddon (Sara Melleri, Sonya Lindfors, Elina Pirinen) and ONE DROP (Sonya Lindfors), and in her own touring work, performative installation Don’t thank for the food. She has taught theatre arts and theory at Uniarts Helsinki’s Theatre Academy and in folk high school courses. At the moment, her most urgent artistic interests include genuineness, class-critical practices, art that challenges our internalized tastes, and ensemble work as a counterforce for individualism.

Atarah’s performative installation Don’t thank for the food was presented in the frame of Moving in November in Caisa in 2025.

Alen Nsambu is a Helsinki-based choreographer and performer who has graduated with a BFA degree in dance and choreography from Den Danske Scenekunstskolen in Copenhagen in 2022 with Rasmus Ölme as head of programme. Since graduating he has collaborated internationally with artists such as Alma Söderberg, Sonya Lindfors, Marie Topp, WAUHAUS and Young Boy Dancing Group, and has performed in productions of the Finnish National Theatre and Helsinki City Theatre.

Nsambu’s artistic practice is centered around identity, optics, and the ways different bodies are granted varying degrees of visibility, opacity, and transparency in society. Situated between choreography and performance, he is interested in creating worlds on stage that push against dominant norms and narratives. His works have been presented at Zodiak – Center for New Dance, Teater Viirus, Amos Rex, The Watermill Center, Dansehallerne, Konträr, and INKONST, among other venues. He was selected as a GENERATION2023 artist for the triennial exhibition at Amos Rex art museum as well as a danceWEB scholarship recipient for ImPulsTanz – Vienna International Dance Festival 2025. Alen Nsambu is one of the Aerowaves Twenty25 artists with his debut solo NEON BEIGE (2024).