KUOPIO.- ANTI - Contemporary Art Festival announced Tiziano Cruz as the 2023 winner of ANTI Festival International Prize for Live Art. The festival, which took place from 12 – 17 September in Kuopio, Finland, celebrates innovative live art that is performative, participatory and embedded in the present moment.

The jury comment: “Tiziano’s work accounts to the consequences of the colonial violence in Argentina and its consequences that currently affect indigenous, racialized and marginalised communities through different degrees of invisibilization, discrimination, epistemicides and deterritorializations that at large signal a form of governance that favours disappearance of difference toward whiteness as norm – an operation that takes place, in different degrees, through the Americas and beyond.

The work of Buenos Aires-based interdisciplinary Tiziano Cruz also gives testimony to the resilience of peoples who through micropolitics resist these forms of continuous subjugation, aiming to make worlds where multiplicities can walk in dignity. In ‘Soliloquio’ [me desperté y golpeé mi cabeza contra la pared] Tizianos’ powerful and poetic oration captures a personal statement to reflect on the local and regional relation and the cultural traditions of his ancestry. He creates a collective and communal work that is not constructed for consumption, but for the empowerment and recognition of communities that have been historically disenfranchised.”

“The spectacle is not mine,” declares the artist. His statement is emblematic of a practice that works towards dissolving hierarchy and dominance in service of forming carefully-crafted performances which simultaneously archive and revive collective cultural memory.

ANTI marks another successful edition as Finland's leading art festival, uniting eager audiences in Kuopio to engage with site-specific and participatory contemporary art programs. Nearly all of the festival's pre-reservation events were fully subscribed, with demand surpassing venue capacities. Attendees and participants flocked from various regions of Finland, while international cultural experts also discovered their path to the ANTI Festival and Kuopio.

The festival drew in around 9,000 attendees in Kuopio, including public-space installations. On Saturday evening, the ANTI prize party at VR Konepaja welcomed over 400 people to the concert of Pimeä Hedelmä band to celebrate both the nominated artists for the ANTI Festival International Prize for Live Art and its winner Tiziano Cruz.

The festival thanks all the artists, supporters, partners, employees, audiences - and everyone who participated in the ANTI Festival 2023.