ANTI - Contemporary Art Festival works with innovative artists on projects that explore and explode urban space.
ANTI began life in 2002. Since then we’ve produce 19 editions of ANTI - Contemporary Art Festival and have established a year-round programme of artist residencies and cultural projects and events. In 2014 we established the ANTI Festival International Prize for Live Art, one of Finland’s richest cultural prizes.
Held annually in Kuopio, Finland, the city hosts the festival, projects by artists from around the world inhabit the spaces of public life – homes, shops, city squares, business, forests, lakes – and directly engage communities and audiences in the making and showing of their work. The festival is free to attend.
We’ve presented and commissioned some of the world’s most exciting artists from USA, Australia, Mexico, Japan and Europe along with leading artists from Finland, Sweden, Norway and Iceland. We’re proud to support an ever-growing generation of emerging artists, often presenting artists internationally for the first time.
ANTI Festival believes that everyone, from any social or cultural background, has right to participate in arts. We aim at making our festival as accessible as possible; the performances are free of charge and can be experienced in everyday spaces such as at city squares, on the streets, in shopping centres, community houses and libraries. Yet our projects often have social aims or themes, we also believe that art has an absolute value as such.
Diversity is an important value for us. We strongly consider intersectionality in our curatorial practice; we present artists of different genders, races, classes, ages, sexual orientations and abilities. Together with the diverse artists we offer different perspectives on the society and the world.
ANTI Festival is a discrimination-free event and organisation. We do not tolerate racism, ageism, sexism, heterosexism, transphobia, ableism, class discrimination or comments on people's bodies.