Roi Vaara

Works for Live Art Denmark
2015: “Wet Paint Handshake” and group performance with Black Market International.

Wet Paint Handshake
At our festival Kulstof 15 Roi presented his performance “Wet Paint Handshake”. Standing in the entrance area of the venue of the festival, Nordkraft in Aalborg/Denmark, dressed in formal black suit and bow tie, he extends his right hand, offering handshakes to the audience as they arrive. Only, between handshakes, he dips his right hand into a bucket of white paint, challenging the audience to accept the mess with the handshake, while his nice suit gradually gets  painted white.

Black Market International
Roi also performed with the legendary performance association Black Market International. A movie about the festival with long excerpts from this exceptional group performance and statements from the performers can be seen here.

2021: In our “Playing up – the Nordic Expansion Pack”, Vaara was featured with his work “Grounding”, where an electric guitar connected to an amplifier could be dragged around in the streets:

About the Artist
Roi Vaara is one of the most internationally recognized performance artists in Scandinavia. He was born in 1953 in Moss (Norway), but grew up in Helsinki, Finland, where he has caused constant controversy in the art world since the early 80s. His critical point of view is not to attract public sensation but to challenge the way we are looking at things.

He is one of the founders of Muu ry (1987), an artist-run interdisciplinary association in Finland and is one of the founders of IAPAO (International Association of Performance Art Organizers). Vaara has organized and curated numerous performance events.

Roi has made performance art since 1982 and from 1988 on, he participates in performances with Black Market International (BMI), whose works explore performance art as a simultaneous form of communication.

The European Live Art Archive has a biography and a video interview of Roi Vaara (requires Flash).