Af Klint
Pho
Photo: Darina Rodionova
— PROJECT NAME
AF KLINT
— ROLE
Scenography, lighting design, video design & fire design
— DATE
Premier 3.10.2025 in Viirus Theatre /
— WORKING GROUP
Director: Essi Rossi
Text and dramaturgy: Essi Rossi, Iida Koro and Susi Siriya Orenius
Translator: Malin Kivelä
Stage-, light- and video design: Milla Martikainen
Set Designer assistant: Kosti Kinnunen
Sculptures: Mariam Falaileh
Sound design: Sarah Kivi
Costume design: Hanne Jurmu
Choreography: Kauri Sorvari
Workshops in mediumship: Kristian Smeds
On stage: Maria Ahlroth, Sarah Kivi, Iida Kuningas, Oskar Pöysti and Kauri Sorvari
Producer: Hanna Sundman
Illustration, lettering: Edith Hammar
“Higher intellectual forces shall speak through you”
Portrait and landscape painter Hilma af Klint was 44 years old when the spirits gave her a mission to leave everything and start painting unprecedented astral paintings.
Hilma af Klint answered YES to this mission.
AF KLINT is a stage performance about Hilma af Klint, possible worlds and how art affects us and we affect each other. However, this is not a biographical piece, but many entrances to the phenomenon of AF KLINT. It is a disturbance that challenges the boundaries of known reality and asks us: what can we say yes to?
In the performance we invite primal chaos, energy, androgynous angels and things beyond comprehension to the stage. At the same time we are at a session with Hilma af Klint’s spiritualist circle De Fem in early 20th century Stockholm, by the Guggenheim Museum in New York in 2018 at the Hilma af Klint exhibition, at the Viirus theatre in Helsinki for the AF KLINT performance in 2025, and in the near future at the opening of the AF KLINT Temple.
From De Fem’s notebook, 16.9.1903:
“You are bewildered by what we have told you, but the phenomenon we are trying to explain is truly bewildering. What is this phenomenon, you ask? Well, beloved, it is the phenomenon of secret growing.”
* Spiritualism is a practice that emerged in the 1840s, with the central idea that there is no death and that souls continue their journey to the spirit world after this life. Spiritualist circles practice communion with the spirit world.
De Fem (“The Five”) was Hilma af Klint’s spiritualist circle, which also consisted of Anna Cassel, Sigrid Hedman, Mathilda Nilsson and Cornelia Cederberg.
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Reviews:
https://www.hs.fi/taide/art-2000011528543.html
https://www.hbl.fi/2025-10-11/en-stillsam-ritual-som-utmanar-kommersen/
https://demokraatti.fi/arvio-viiruksen-ensi-ilta-vie-taiteilijan-mystiseen-maailmaan