Each day hides a grain of Sunday vol.2
Circus Maximus has been severely affected by the recent government cuts to arts and culture, which means our 2025 programme is coming to life in very precarious circumstances. As a curator, I've had to readjust our original plans to the bare minimum, and I still wonder whether we'll be able to pull off a balancing act. Everyone involved is taking a leap of faith, and I thank them for their trust. I'm learning not to push myself, to do less with less, and to stop compensating with my body what our cultural structures fail to support. In such a context, Each day hides a grain of Sunday expresses the intention of doing my job with presence and curiosity, adjusting everything accordingly, as many times as needed. It reminds me that joy and simplicity are a practice –let's take it slow, scale things down, and fail if we need to, but never at the expense of our health and enthusiasm.
This year, we are hosting a laboratory that brings together four Helsinki-based artists: Francesca Bogani Amadori, João Luís Matos Lopes, Olga Spyropoulou, and Sonjis Laine. Its purpose is to offer a framework for developing existing projects while inviting artists to reflect on the role space plays, or could play, in their practice.
As a spaceless arts platform, Circus Maximus has often co-produced works in non-traditional art venues in Helsinki, and the laboratory will generate awareness of how space can guide artistic processes beyond spatial constraints. We'll have two collective seminars in the Spring, and artists will benefit from one-on-one curatorial sessions. Each artist will have a public showing in August or September 2025.
The decision to support existing works has been strategic. We are testing ways to accompany artists at different points of their journey and give visibility to their processes, hoping that, in time, it contributes to building a community around their practice. In 2024 and 2025, we've been approaching co-production through curatorial guidance and limited financial support. Each day hides a grain of Sunday vol.2 focuses on works-in-progress and long-term projects, offering them an anchor in time.
We've also been exploring co-production through partnerships, something new at Circus Maximus. We've sought partners whose expertise can offer depth to the laboratory's spatial focus and potentially expand each artist's research.
I want to thank the Architecture and Design Museum, especially Jemina Vainikka Lindholm, Arja-Liisa Kaasinen, Kaura Raudaskoski, Anna Autio and Joona Rantasalo for opening the doors of this institution. The museum is joining the laboratory in an advisory role and hosting our first collective seminar. Artists have had the opportunity to share questions relevant to their practice. They will receive a guided presentation of the library, collections and archives of the Architecture and Design Museum, including free access to its exhibitions. This seminar offers insights into how architecture and urban planning approach space, and we'll take Helsinki as our guiding thread.
Our second collective seminar is with Artists with Evidence (AwE), an organisation which promotes evidence-based environmental solutions by forging innovative relationships between the sciences and the arts. I thank AwE's program director, Ines Montalvao, for jumping on board and sharing her knowledge at different stages of our process. AwE will offer guidance, foster cross-disciplinary discussions, and bring natural sciences into the picture, reminding us of the interconnected dimensions and timeframes present when working spatially –and that we might overlook when following human-centred approaches.
Finally, Each day hides a grain of Sunday is also an incantation, a spell, a prayer: I want to host audiences in a way that feels welcoming and faithful to the spirit of each artist's universe. My role is to enable situations where things are clear and simple, making it possible for participants to surrender to the artistic experience and for artists to focus on their work. I'm curating the 2025 programme as Candama, a personal project through which I offer curating, coaching and poetic consultancy services: thank you, Circus Maximus, for supporting it. With this said, we're excited to start with Each day hides a grain of Sunday vol.2. Meet our artists and learn about their projects below!
Warmly, Daniela Pascual Esparza
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Francesca Bogani Amadori
Francesca Bogani Amadori is an interdisciplinary artist based in Helsinki. Their work explores how power structures embedded in everyday life influence individuals and shape their experiences. They focus on everyday elements such as objects, images, textures, sounds, actions, data, and personal experiences. Their approach emphasizes the processes of (de)constructing and (re)contextualizing both matter and being.
Their recent projects investigate the intersection of place and individuals through performance, walking, mapping, and active listening. Francesca's work spans various mediums, including sculpture, audiovisual installations, video, sound, photography, sound walks, and writing.
For “Each day hides a grain of Sunday vol. 2”, Francesca is developing a sensory walk that invites us to pay attention to granite and its various manifestations within Helsinki’s urban landscape. Interested in areas such as Hernesaari, they will investigate how granite is used to delineate bodies of water, introducing a sense of idleness where there once was fluidity. What happens when we trace the materiality of granite throughout the city? To what kind of spaces and surroundings can it lead us to? Learn more about Francesca at https://francescaboganiamadori.com/
Image courtesy of the artist.
João Luís Matos Lopes
João Luís Matos Lopes is a percussionist/composer based in Helsinki since 2016, with an MA in Music from the Sibelius Academy. He co-founded the KAôS Global Music Collective, Coletivo Peixe Fora D’Água, and Colectivo Azul, a collaborative project that expands his work as a performer and creator.
His work includes performances with Talvi Sirkus Ilo, a summer tour with the Sápmi band SOLJU, and collaborations with diverse Finnish groups like DanchevDomain and MeNiños. João is a featured artist in Global Art Point and Artists With Evidence.
For “Each day hides a grain of Sunday vol. 2”, João will focus on SOLO – Porto Helsinki Sound Promenade. The project connects local sounds with personal and collective narratives, fostering a deeper understanding of how we experience space and sound. João will map a street, a line that could be the same in Helsinki and Porto, to create a video-sound installation in which the landscapes of both cities overlap, opening the possibility for a dialogue between places. Learn more about João at https://www.colectivoazul.com/
Image courtesy of the artist.
Olga Spyropoulou
Olga Spyropoulou is a Finland-based artist. Her artistic media are performance art and poetry. She is interested in how we relate to one another and experiments with various modalities of spect-actorship and non-hierarchical methodologies. In her work, she explores questions of encounter, agency, and consent and how those translate into language.
Olga is currently the artistic director of Reality Research Center and the co-chairperson of Catalysti ry, an association of transcultural artists in Finland. Intercultural dialogue, artistic collaboration, and ethical labor practices are important aspects of her practice.
For “Each day hides a grain of Sunday vol. 2”, Olga will explore spaces and objects designed to induce silence. She will craft a collective experience aimed at connecting with “pregnant silence”, a state in which we are actively awaiting something to unfold. This exploration is part of her long-term artistic research project on the Finnish poet Ester Kaarina Nokkonen, one of Olga's heteronyms. Lear more about Olga at https://ospyropo.wixsite.com/portfolio/about Image: Noora Lehtovuori.
Sonjis Laine
Sonjis Laine is a dance and performance artist living and working in Helsinki. With a background in anthropology, she approaches dancing as thinking and writes ethnographically about dance and dancing. In her artistic work, Sonjis deals with embodied knowledges, landscapes, imagination and emotion as openings for dancing.
Sonjis has worked as a dancer and performer in Finland and Sweden with, among others, Routa Company and Sari Palmgren, Ellinor Ljungkvist, Stina Nyberg, Heine Avdal & Yukiko Shinozaki and Eleanor Bauer. She works as part of Reality Research Center and artist collective Prekaarit Praktiikat.
For “Each day hides a grain of Sunday vol. 2”, Sonjis will continue her work on Tracing, a practice dealing with ethnographic research methods as artistic openings, and the construction of place and landscape through senses and fiction. Tracing happens always in relation to a place: Sonjis will take us to Mustavuori cave in Vuosaari to experience imaginary yet very real accounts of the movement of mineral beings and geological deep-time. Learn more about Sonjis at https://sonjislaine.com/
Image courtesy of the artist