Industry Muscle
Five Scores for Architecture
May 10–November 23, 2025
Venice
Italy
Industry Muscle examines architecture using the trans body as a lens, establishing a dialogue with Sverre Fehn’s Nordic Countries Pavilion, a celebrated example of architectural modernism. Working with a team of collaborators, artist Teo Ala-Ruona will present five speculative scores that serve as critical prompts for future architectural practice.
The Commissioners of the Nordic Countries Pavilion will exhibit an installation and new performance work by the Finnish artist Teo Ala-Ruona and his multidisciplinary team at the 19th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia.
Curated by Kaisa Karvinen, for Architecture & Design Museum Helsinki, Industry Muscle: Five Scores for Architecture will continue Teo Ala-Ruona’s work on trans embodiment and ecology, expanding his focus into architecture.
Industry Muscle considers the trans body as a lens through which to examine modern architecture and the built environment, establishing a dialogue with the celebrated architecture of the Nordic Countries Pavilion, designed by Sverre Fehn in 1962. By contrasting Fehn’s canonical work of modernism against an alternative model for architectural practice that takes the trans body as its starting point, the exhibition will offer insights into the relationships between architecture, the body, and ecological collapse.
In Industry Muscle the audience is invited to observe the Nordic Countries Pavilion, as well as architecture more broadly, as a stage for sociopolitical norms that are embedded in fossil-based culture. The staging of the exhibition places the visitor at the centre of an architectural experience where all participants are on display, enacting everyday performances. In Ala-Ruona’s interventions, the trans body crowbars its way into this structure and reveals the blueprint within.
Industry Muscle unfolds through five speculative scores that serve as critical prompts for future architecture. Scores are used in performance art as tasks, notations, and exercises that provide instructions for a performer. The exhibition brings this concept to the field of architecture, using the following themes:
Impurity: questioning the role of the ideal of purity in modern architecture and the modern way of life.
Decategorisation: challenging the categorisation and segregation inherent in our built environment.
Performance: investigating how architectural spaces shape everyday performances related to gender and identity.
Techno-body: empowering bodies to autonomically reshape themselves through architecture.
Reuse: considering transbody as an example of re-use and a prompt for practicing ecological thinking.
Teo Ala-Ruona works at the intersection between performance art, theatre and choreography, and focuses on trans embodiment and ecology. For Industry Muscle, he has assembled a multidisciplinary team of collaborators including architect A.L. Hu, set designer and artist Teo Paaer, sound designer Tuukka Haapakorpi, dramaturge Even Minn, visual artist Venla Helenius, fashion designer Ervin Latimer, graphic designer Kiia Beilinson and performers Kid Kokko, Caroline Suinner, and Romeo Roxman Gatt. Collaboration plays a central role in Ala-Ruona's work. Each member of the working group contributes their own artistic part to the exhibition.
“Sverre Fehn’s Nordic Countries Pavilion is a canonical work of modernist architecture that provides an engaging setting for Teo Ala-Ruona, a performance artist whose practice explores trans embodiment, the material environment, and ecological questions. Incorporating Ala-Ruona and his team into the context of architectural exhibitions opens up new perspectives on architectural discourse, particularly concerning the built environment, the body, and fossil fuel culture", says Kaisa Karvinen, Curator of the Nordic Countries Pavilion on behalf of Architecture & Design Museum Helsinki.
"In Ala-Ruona’s work, the performance works as a research tool. In the field of performance art, experience of embodiment is studied and valued in a way that has much to offer architectural discourse. After all, the human body has always been one of the fundamental starting points for spatial design and architecture", she continues.
Teo Ala-Ruona says:
“Industry Muscle will speculate on an alternative model for architectural practice, grounded in the experience of the trans body. Conceptually, this can be as simple but as fundamental as the sensation of comfort that comes when I am in a visually complex space that places less emphasis on the silhouette of my body, a reversal of the modernist ideal expressed in the architecture of the pavilion.”
“The built environment is largely constructed based on prevalent cultural norms. This plays a crucial role in the staging of bodies in everyday life, and in creating the ecological burden of the building industry. With my team of multidisciplinary collaborators, I want to start new conversations by exploring the possibilities of an architectural practice that contrasts sharply with the status quo.”
The Nordic Countries Pavilion is commissioned by an alliance formed of Architecture & Design Museum Helsinki (Finland), The National Museum of Norway and ArkDes (Sweden). The three commissioning bodies rotate the leadership of the commissioning process, which for the 19th International Architecture Exhibition has been led by Architecture & Design Museum Helsinki. END
Events
Inauguration: May 8, 2:30–3pm
Live Performance: May 8, 3–5pm
Live Performance: May 9, 3–5pm
Live Performance: May 10, 3–5pm
Additional notes
The Nordic Countries Pavilion, designed by Sverre Fehn in 1962, is a concrete masterpiece in Giardini Park. Carefully crafted to blend with the surrounding nature, it’s one of most central pavilions. Co-owned by Norway, Finland and Sweden, the pavilion hosts exhibitions curated by each country in rotation. In 2025 the Architecture & Design Museum Helsinki is in charge of realizing the exhibition, on behalf of commissioners Carina Jaatinen at Architecture & Design Museum Helsinki, Ingrid Røynesdal, at the National Museum of Norway and Karin Nilsson at ArkDes, Sweden’s National Centre for Architecture and Design. The curatorial team from the Architecture & Design Museum Helsinki includes curator Kaisa Karvinen and curatorial advisor Suvi Saloniemi.
Kaisa Karvinen works as a curator at Architecture & Design Museum Helsinki. She is a curator and researcher who graduated as an architect from Aalto University and obtained a Master in Research in art and design from St. Lucas School of Arts Antwerp. In recent years, Karvinen has been preparing her doctoral dissertation at the University of Oulu, working on exhibition and research projects, and focusing on modern architecture and the role of concrete as a material in urban environments.
Teo Ala-Ruona is an interdisciplinary artist based in Helsinki, working internationally within the expanded field of performance. Ala-Ruona’s work is strongly tied to theory, and he uses the performing body in his art as a reflective surface for the impacts of various societal, sociopolitical, and historical forms of power. Ala-Ruona’s work has recently been shown e.g. in Performa Biennial, New York; The Vilnius Biennial of Performance Art; The Finnish National Gallery Kiasma, Helsinki; and The Institute of Contemporary Arts in London. Ala-Ruona holds an MA in Art Education and an MA in Ecology and Contemporary Performance.
In the artist selection process, the museum consulted an international advisory board comprising Nick Axel (architect, editor, writer, and head of architecture at Gerrit Rietveld Academie and E-Flux Architecture), architect, curator and critic Eva Franch i Gilabert, and Panu Savolainen (assistant professor of architectural history and restoration at Aalto University).
Project partners: Cocoa, Genelec, Helsinki Distilling Company, Helsinki Partners, Luonnonbetoni, Vihdin Betoni, Zodiak - Center for New Dance Major support: The Ministry of Education and Culture, Finland, The Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Finland.
Media contacts
For further information and interviews about the Nordic Countries Pavilion at the 19th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, please contact ING Media: Ben James | ben.james@ing-media.com | + 44 (0) 7534 970 728
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