NEW THEATRE INSTITUTE OF LATVIA

contemporary performing arts in Latvia and abroad

More and more artists and art organizations today choose direct engagement with the world of politics. This process changes the way we understand the role of art in society and creates new subversive strategies that surpass traditional divisions between art and activism. Arts producer and curator Eva Neklyaeva (Helsinki) will talk about this process, focusing mainly on two projects she’s been involved with recently: Make Arts Policy! and Checkpoint Helsinki.

Eva Neklyaeva is a cultural producer and curator based in Helsinki. Neklyaeva is concerned with the questions of freedom and focuses her practice on exploring these questions in the areas of art, politics and sexuality. Neklyaeva spent previous year working as a director of contemporary art organization Checkpoint Helsinki, after falling in love with the new institution’s passion for finding new ways of producing, presenting and communicating art in the city. Before that, she had been running Baltic Circle International Contemporary Theatre Festival for six years. Under her leadership, the festival became an acclaimed international platform and laboratory for emerging multidisciplinary performance. In 2014, Neklyaeva founded Wonderlust – a festival of diverse and creative sexuality that takes place every June in Helsinki. Neklyaeva is an active campaigner for human rights in her home country, Belarus. For her work, Neklyaeva received two TINFO awards for innovation in theatre field, Finnish PEN’s Freedom of Speech award as well as Finnish Sexologists Association’s award for promotion of sexual wellbeing. Eva freely mixes personal, political and professional and is also an excellent cook.

The talk is part of the training programme “Theatre Expanded” organized by NTIL in collaboration with VabaLava in Tallinn and with the support of the Central Baltic Porgramme 2014-2020.

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