Artist Statement
My artistic practice is a continual exploration of the body—its potential, poetics, and political dimensions amid ecological urgency. I strive to create participatory spaces that foster experimentation, often manifested as celebrations and collective rituals infused with speculative fiction and calls for communal action. I’m particularly interested in the dynamics that arise when diverse bodies converge to explore alternative choreographies of movement, joy, imagination, and community, fostering a shared sense of connection and purpose. Through this work, I aim to inspire collective reflection and engagement with our shared environment.
Since 2020 I am the Director and founder of the Social Choreography Lab Helsinki, an artistic platform that works at the intersection of embodiment, choreography, and political life. The lab facilitates collective processes and collaborative workshops, using movement and bodily practices as tools to critically reflect on and reimagine social, cultural, and political norms. Rooted in the belief that choreography is a powerful medium for critical inquiry and care, the lab creates accessible spaces for community-building and supports collective well-being in response to increasingly digitalized and fragmented social landscapes.
Bio
Jon Irigoyen (Bilbao) is a Basque-Spanish artist, performer, curator and researcher. Since 1996 he has lived and worked in different cities such as Madrid, Bristol, Barcelona and Helsinki, where he currently resides.
Irigoyen has been a board member and organizer of the Festival Pixelache Helsinki since 2009, and a member of the visual artists’ association MUU since 2017. He is one of the founding members of the Cluster for Critical Artistic Research (CCARe), hosted by Aalto University since 2019. Currently, Irigoyen serves on the board of the performing arts association Esitystaiteen Seura based at ESKUS Performance Centre, Helsinki.
His research interests and artistic projects span the intersecting relationships between embodiment and political life, autonomy, celebration and ritual. Recently his work has focused on the political and social power of movement through the concept of Social Choreography, which forms the backbone of his current doctoral research at Aalto University, Finland. Since 2020, Irigoyen acts as the director of Social Choreography Lab Helsinki, a collaborative artistic experiment at the intersection of movement and political life.
As an artist and curator, he has participated in conferences and given workshops internationally in countries such as Germany, Finland, Sweden, Poland, Spain, Lithuania, Colombia, Latvia, Ireland, Russia, Georgia, Peru, Mexico, the United States and Denmark.
He has been selected for different residences as both curator, TempleBar Gallery (Dublin, 2011) and artist, ANA Art space (Copenhagen, 2017). Among others he has curated the exhibitions Intimate Inmensity at Musterzimmer Gallery (Berlin,) and The worker’s hand at HIAP Gallery (Helsinki.) He has participated in solo and collective exhibitions worlwide as well as taken part in different festivals such as Mäntän Kuvataideviikot (Mänttä, Finland) Tbilisi Triennial (Georgia) and MANIFESTA10 in St Petersburg.
Irigoyen is currently developing his doctorate in artistic research at Aalto University under the supervision of Bassam El Baroni, Associate Professor in Curating and Mediating Art. The artist and choreographer Michael Klien, Professor at Duke University, is his current advisor. Previously, his research was under the supervision of Italian philosopher Franco Berardi (Bifo).
His artworks can be found in public art collections such as Suomen Taideyhdistys, The Art Collection of the town of Mänttä-Vilppula, and in multiple private art collections.
Irigoyen’s research and body of work has been generously supported by: Taike-Arts Promotion Centre Finland, Spanish Embassy in Finland, Finnish Cultural Foundation, Frame, Nordic Culture Point, Aalto University and Kone Foundation among others.