Irma Optimist VIVA! Art action
© Irma Optimist, Untitled Live Action 18, 2023. Photo : Christian Berven
OBORO is proud to support VIVA!’s mission and has been a partner for many years. For the 2025 edition, we are presenting Finnish artist Irma Optimist.
Irma Optimist’s work aims to disrupt scientific logic. Her performances are shaped by time and space, and by the temporality of presence. Functioning as non-linear systems, they have no fixed point and exist through the interaction between artist and audience—a complex relationship. Using "optimistic mathematics," she seeks to restore the symbols of food, love, and sexuality, as the body has exploded under the pressure of desire, utility, and energy. Western culture has sublimated itself through science, but Optimist’s performance brings science back to the body. She restores a vivid visibility—or transparency—to the politics of identity. What Irma Optimist looks like and what she does are as true as her very being.
© Irma Optimist, Untitled Live Action 18, 2023. Photo : Christian Berven
Irma, who adopted “Optimist” as her last name to counterbalance Finnish melancholy, is a major figure in performance art in Finland. Since 1989, she has presented over 301 performances across Europe, North America, and Asia.
