Industry Muscle: Five Scores for Architecture
May 10–November 23, 2025
Venice
Italy
Industry Muscle, Teo Ala-Ruona’s exhibition created for the 19th International Architecture Exhibition of the Venice Biennale has debuted in Venice.
Developed with a multidisciplinary team and curated by Kaisa Karvinen for Architecture & Design Museum Helsinki, Industry Muscle: Five Scores for Architecture continues Teo Ala-Ruona’s work on trans embodiment and ecology, expanding his focus into architecture.
Performances will be held between 3–5pm on the preview days, May 8 and 9 of, and on the first day of public opening on Saturday, May 10.
Inauguration: May 8, 2:30–3pm / Live performance: May 8, 3–5pm / Live performance: May 9, 3–5pm / Live performance: May 10, 3–5pm.
Teo Ala-Ruona has assembled a multidisciplinary team that includes performers Romeo Roxman Gatt, Kid Kokko and Caroline Suinner to enact five scores that serve as critical prompts for future architectural practice informed by the trans experience of the built environment.
Industry Muscle: Five Scores for Architecture 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 and completed 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 fossil-fuel based culture.
In Industry Muscle the audience is invited to consider the Nordic 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.
Installation
Each score (or prompt) written for the exhibition is given its own spatial interpretation within the Pavilion. These sculptural elements, constructed by scenographer-artist Teo Paaer, utilise recycled materials such as clay and concrete. Facade marbles removed during the renovation of Finlandia Hall and a defunct sports car are also repurposed as a sculpture. The installation additionally features a video work by visual artist Venla Helenius and window paintings by graphic designer Kiia Beilinson. Sound artist Tuukka Haapakorpi’s audio piece guides the audience through different metamorphoses of human and machine, transitioning them from one space to another.
Performance
Working methods characteristic of performance art have served as a foundation for the creation of the Industry Muscle exhibition. The durational performances accompanying the exhibition translate the experienced built environment into the language of bodies. Costumes made from recycled textiles unify the exhibition’s video and visual elements as well as its colour palette. These performances are a collaboration between Teo Ala-Ruona, dramaturg Even Minn, sound designer Tuukka Haapakorpi, and performers Kid Kokko, Caroline Suinner, and Romeo Roxman Gatt. The costumes are designed by fashion designer Ervin Latimer.
Essay
An essay titled Bodytopian Architecture, co-written by Teo Ala-Ruona and architect A.L. Hu, will be published alongside the exhibition. The essay provides theoretical context for the work, weaving together trans and architectural theory with ecological thought and artistic research. Read the essay here
Industry Muscle unfolds through five speculative scores that serve as critical prompts for future architectural practice. 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 modernist ideal of purity inherent in both architecture and lifestyle.
Decategorisation: Challenging practices based on categorisation and separation within the built environment.
Performance: Investigating how architecture and spatial design shape everyday performances of gender and identity.
Techno-body: Recognizing the dynamic interaction between body, building, and technology, while advocating for bodily autonomy.
Re-use: Approaching the trans body as a form of reuse and a tool for ecological thinking.
Kaisa Karvinen, Curator of the Nordic Countries Pavilion on behalf of Architecture and Design Museum Helsinki, said:
“Modernist design tools, such as Le Corbusier’s Modulor Man, are based on standardised representations of the human body. While they helped create efficient and aesthetically coherent spaces, they also excluded bodily and experiential diversity. Modern architecture emerged in an era that assumed the endless availability of fossil fuels. In today’s ecological crisis, it’s important to ask what assumptions underpin our built environment – and how we might find new ways to approach and celebrate modern architecture.
“The exhibition explores architecture through performance and artistic research. It suggests that our relationship to the body can open up new ways of seeing the built environment. Through the lens of the trans body, the ideals embedded in architecture – such as its relation to gender and fossil fuel culture – are brought into question.”
Artist Teo Ala-Ruona says:
“Industry Muscle proposes an architectural model grounded in my artistic practice and lived experience as both a trans person and a performance artist who uses the body as a tool for research,” says “The work explores how ideas about the body have been shaped by fossil fuel culture in modern architecture. The Nordic Pavilion provides a uniquely compelling context for investigating these questions in collaboration with the artistic team.”
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. The exhibition commissioners are Carina Jaatinen, Karin Nilsson (ArkDes) and Yngvill Aagaard Sjöösten (National Museum of Norway). The curatorial team from the Museum of Architecture and Design includes curator Kaisa Karvinen and curatorial advisor Suvi Saloniemi.
The project is supported by the Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture, the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, and the Finnish Cultural Foundation.
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Media contacts: For further information and interviews about the Nordic Countries Pavilion at the 19th International Architecture Exhibition of the Venice Biennale, please contact ING Media: Ben James / ben.james [at] ing-media.com / T + 44 (0) 7534 970 728
