Mad House thanks Maija Mustonen for her term as curator 2023–2025

Maija Mustonen / Photo: Jarno Parkkima

Mad House would like to thank Maija Mustonen for her visionary and dedicated work at the Mad House Helsinki, where she was the lead curator from 2023 to 2025

During Mustonen’s three-year term, Mad House moved to the Parvisali stage of House of Text, produced numerous performances and collaborations. With a background in multidisciplinary performing arts, Mustonen has sought to bring practices from the visual arts field into the house, particularly through strengthening curatorial dialogue. The programme selection processes have evolved toward a more team-based model, in which the curator plans the programme together with the rest of the team, examining it as a multi-layered whole from the perspectives of artistic content, production, marketing communications, audience engagement, and the field. In addition to performances, recurring events and externally curated programs have been introduced. Mustonen has also been involved in the merger process between Mad House and the Reality Research Center (RRC).

“Mad House is a venue serving a broad field of independent performing artists, where curation means building a diverse program in collaboration with various actors. It is not a project based on a single curator’s vision, but rather a performance venue that listens to the artistic field over the long term,” Mustonen notes.

Mustonen also highlights areas for improvement: “The ‘curator on a year-by-year basis’ model—with its seasonal and part-time contracts—has limited long-term planning potential. Going forward, it is important to aim for longer-term planning, regular open calls, and transparency in selection criteria.”

When asked about the strengths of the merger between Mad House and the Reality Research Center, Mustonen notes that RRC is strongly committed to practice-based artistic research,  seeking new forms and spaces for performance, and serving its members, and that it also produces large-scale community art projects. Mad House, on the other hand, has evolved into a year-round performance venue that listens more broadly to the performing arts fields and its audiences, responds to contemporary topics and acts as an enabler for works in the multidisciplinary field of contemporary performance. It is crucial that these two distinct identities are integrated in such a way that both can flourish—and that something new emerges from this foundation.