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Villa Karo - Finnish West African Cultural Centre

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Bénin
Grand-Popo
Villa Karo - Finnish West African Cultural Centre

Villa Karo is the Finnish Institute for West-Africa consisting of a cultural centre and an artist and research residence in Grand-Popo, Benin, West-Africa

Villa Karo aims to promote knowledge about Africa and African culture in Finland and to support local culture in Grand-Popo, Benin. Finnish or Finland based residents and West-African ones who are artists, researchers and cultural practitioners of different sectors are admitted to Villa Karo annually for a period lasting from 4 weeks to 3 months working with and learning from local peers. Since th

e center was found in 2000, more than 700 residents have worked in Villa Karo. The centre has also had thousands of visitors ranging from university student groups to Tarja Halonen, the president of Finland. Villa Karo also offers different kinds of cultural activities and services: monthly concerts, Friday movie nights, a library, two museums, English classes, workshops and exhibitions. Please visit VK’s official website https://villakaro.org for additional information or contact us at toimisto{a}villakaro.org in French, English or Finnish.

17/04/2026

The stage is on fire at Villa Karo!

Join us for an exceptional evening dedicated to music and theatre with unique performances by Gbeze Junior, aka Houegnon🎤 and Baob’Art🎭

🔥 FIAS BENIN-TOGO 2026 – 2nd EDITION
A must-see event at the International Festival of Arts and Entertainment. Promising atmosphere, emotion, and talent!

🔥Baob’Art - Benin Theatre
A moment of breathtaking theatrical performance, relaxation and entertainment not to be missed!

🗓️Date: May 2, 2026
🕙 Time: 9 and 10 PM
📍 Location: Villa Karo, Grand-Popo
Free admission

💥 Don’t just hear about it… come experience it for yourself!

15/04/2026

A U B I N

Comlan Aubin Feligbe, a dramaturg, a storyteller and an Ifá-priest, was in residence in Villa Karo in February to write his text "Sa-guda ou les cendres écrivent mieux que le feu" (Sa-guda, the ashes write better than the fire), a text that interrogates memory, the ancestry and the invisible marks of history.

His experience in Villa Karo was as much filled with solitary writing on the beach as with new co-operations. Together with another resident, writer Emilia Mäenmaa, he created a new concept Karo Poétique, a French-Finnish poetry night. Karo Poétique took place on Villa Karo’s beautiful mosaic in the calm of Grand-Popo.

“Co-operation with others was smooth. Exchanges between artists but also an interest in my Ifá practices created a rich dialogue between creation and traditional knowledge.”

For Aubin, Villa Karo was a space of exceptional concentration but also of opening towards something different. A place where silence and new acquaintances nourished his writing deeply.

“The place doesn't stay passive before your work. No, it puts its hands in the dough.”

Working in the Finnish cultural institute of West Africa affected Aubin’s work.

“This residency profoundly influenced the rhythm and approach to work. I integrated even more listening to spaces and presence of the invisible vibration in my work. This was also the first time I worked on the seashore, my eyes directly fixed in the ocean that saw the bodies of those like me leave. So everything was different.”

The writer whose laughter resonated often and loud making others join his good mood finds Villa Karo a real bridge between cultures. “It gives a dynamic to the local artistic life while valorising the exchange between artists and communities in a mutual respect.“

08/04/2026

Mia Campbell is a psychologist and cultural producer from Finland. As a producer, she focuses on Caribbean dance forms such as dancehall, which are partly rooted in West African dances.

During her residency at Villa Karo, she has immersed herself in local culture through dance and music, while also learning about Vodun practices and how they shape everyday life in Benin.

This period has deepened her understanding of embodied knowledge, community, and the ways in which cultural context influences well-being and healing practices. The shared encounters have been central to her experience, bringing a strong sense of meaning and fulfilment, and continue to inform and enrich her work as a clinical psychologist.

If you’re interested in more of Mia’s work as a cultural producer or want to get acquainted with dancehall, check out

01/04/2026

🔥 CONCERT LIVE EXCEPTIONNEL 🔥

La star béninoise Fanicko débarque à Grand-Popo pour un show inédit ! 🎤✨

📍 Lieu : Villa Karo
🗓️ Date : 05 avril 2026
⏰ Heure : 20h
🎟️ Entrée : Libre & Gratuite

Prépare-toi à vibrer au rythme de ses plus grands hits dans une ambiance unique en bord de mer 🌊🔥

Viens seul(e), entre amis ou en famille vivre une soirée inoubliable !

30/03/2026

Ella Männikkö is a classical violist born in Oulu, Finland. Her musical journey has taken her from the Sibelius Academy to the Hamburg University of Music, and now to Villa Karo. During her residency, Männikkö prepared a media artwork titled ORANGE. The work combines video, solo viola, and poetry. The piece explores the intimate, safe space between player and instrument. The work is based on a poem which is part of a forthcoming poetry collection structured around three natural elements — water, earth, and air — each symbolising different layers of the mind, intertwining with the life and experiences of a young woman and musician.

During the residency, Männikkö is filming and editing the video material for ORANGE, capturing shifting shades of orange that echo the light seen through closed eyelids. Through her media works, she seeks to challenge the elitist stigma often attached to classical music by bringing lo-fi (low fidelity) culture into the core of the industry.

Inspired by the local Vodun religion and its animistic worldview, she has reflected on how nature and its elements are understood as living souls. This perspective has deepened her poetic language and imagery, while also encouraging her to draw parallels with Finnish folk traditions and her own roots.

The residency has also become a meaningful space for exchange of ideas with West African artists. Crashing very different cultures together, has broadened and strengthened the understanding of her own position and view as an artist.

21/03/2026

Are you looking for interesting opportunities and challenges for your career? Apply for residency at Villa Karo!

Villa Karo is a cultural center as well as an artist and research residence located in the village of Grand-Popo in Benin, West Africa. Over the years, our residency has already offered unforgettable experiences to more than 700 residents.

You will get to enjoy the safe and warm atmosphere of Grand-Popo, the constant presence of the sound of waves and the various workspaces offered by Villa Karo. Above all, you get to benefit from the daily exchange of ideas and thoughts with others and enjoy the culturally enriched area where numerous residents have left their footprints.

The application period for Autumn 2026 and Spring 2027 residences ends on the 31st of March 2026. Apply through our online portal!

More information on our website villakaro.org, link in bio!

19/03/2026

Emily Gleason is a ceramic sculpture artist and writer from the United States. Humor and playfulness are at the core of her art practice. Emily spent nine weeks as an AIR at Villa Karo where she attempted to adapt her sculptures to local materials and firing methods, working with Grand-Popo master potter Miriam N’nanki. Going from factory made clay and electric ‘set it and forget it’ kilns to wild, self-processed clay and hand-built mud brick wood fired ovens was both butt-kicking and awe inspiring.

In the end, the result was a collection of rough, wood-fired sculptures made from Benin clay that reference daily life in Grand-Popo, with a twist of the artist’s mind. Some whole, some not so much. Such is life. While in residence, Emily also taught a ceramic mask making workshop for Villa Karo residents.

When not up to her elbows in mud, Emily spent over 100 hours in and by the ocean in Villa Karo’s backyard. Her state of near constant briney-ness kept most mosquitoes at bay and led to an unexpected writing project where she wrote 30 sea inspired poems in 30 days. She hopes to publish them in the near future. She currently lives and works in Kona, Hawaii.

🌊🌊🌊
🖋️
📸 nr. 1

17/03/2026

Jaana Partanen and Heikki Lamusuo, a designer, artist, and architect couple from Kuopio Finland, filled Villa Karo residency with their warm presence and cozy Kuopio dialect. These empathy designers, a term created by and for themselves describing a method of including empathy, inclusion and community into design projects, worked on a book for their anniversary. The artists will both turn 60 next year.

J: "There will be a birthday party, how big it will be remains to be seen."

Alongside the book, they were creating new designs for their Palad Rescue project. Both projects were successful and there were still time for the active couple's numerous excursions and community activities all through their residency.

H: "Our experience in Villa Karo was great, not only interesting but contradictory. This was an amazing opportunity to see conditions outside our own culture, both in good and in bad. Especially the place of women in society raised a lot of questions. "

The couple was inspired by the culture in Villa Karo's surroundings, from which glimpses may be seen in their work in the future. The new environment with it's colours and rhythm will be of inspiration for empathy designing in the future. But for this couple, seeking deep connection and community creating, one thing is above all.

"The people we have met will always stay with us. We hope and believe to see many residents and locals in the future. Welcome to Kuopio!"

16/03/2026

Petra Matsi is an international development professional from Finland and shares a passion for creating art, calling herself amusedly an amateur artist. Her time in Grand Popo became an experiential journey into nature-based living and healing. Petra arrived with a curiosity that had been growing for years while working on Indigenous health within global health systems, and a desire to better understand what the decolonisation of global health might mean in practice — beyond institutions and policy frameworks.

During her residency at Villa Karo, Petra explored health not only as an individual condition but as a living system of collective, environmental and creative wellbeing. She spent much of her time in nearby villages, learning from elders, healers and practitioners about plants, healing practices, and the ways knowledge systems continue to be carried and lived.

What moved her most was the deep understanding of health as something relational: the wellbeing of the individual intertwined with the wellbeing of the community, and the community inseparable from the natural and spiritual worlds. Within Vodun cosmology, this balance stretches across many layers of existence — spiritual, physical, emotional, mental and energetic.

During the residency Petra translated these reflections into pieces of writing and painting. One work, created together with local artist, Affanou Victus, and with the support of Villa Karo and residents, used recycled waste washed ashore by the sea to explore the connection between the spiritual and physical worlds — and our shared responsibility to care for that relationship.

This experience deepened her understanding of health as something held collectively: the health of one affecting the health of all, and the health of the collective shaping our relationship with the living world.

Grand Popo left her with a deep respect for the ways Beninese communities hold knowledge about health, balance, and our relationship with nature.

Thank you Petra for being part of our community and all the best for your next endeavours in Namibia!

✒️

16/03/2026

K A R O E N S C È N E
Let's go back to the magical night with Fifamè ✨

10/03/2026

Docent Anna Veijola works as a teacher of history, social studies, and philosophy, as well as a teacher educator at the Teacher Training School of the University of Jyväskylä. In Benin, Anna examines how the past is memorialised from an African rather than Western perspective.

She researches how historical events, traditions, and identities are manifested in museums, monuments, and preserved historical sites. Museums are curated spaces that reflect the perspectives of certain groups while downplaying or omitting others. The same applies to memorials and statues, which commemorate selected events or individuals while leaving many unrecognised. Likewise, sites deemed historically significant and preserved for conservation often serve to reinforce specific narratives of the past.

Therefore, Anna aims to explore how commemorative practices shape collective memory and historical understanding in the region and how the legacy of colonialism and the transatlantic slave trade are reflected in local memory cultures and how these relate to Western historiography.

The main outcome of her research is the creation of educational materials that allow Beninese people to tell their own history. Her goal is to bring these perspectives into Finnish history education, offering materials that highlight African - and especially Beninese - culture through the narratives of the people themselves.

Thank you Anna for staying in Villa Karo!

📷 1-2, 5-6: Maikki Kantola

09/03/2026

Simo Mikkonen is a professor of sociocultural remembering at the University of Eastern Finland. Simo stayed at the residence to research Benin’s multilayered memory cultures. Memory cultures refer to the ways societies remember and interpret their past: it is the shaping of collective identities through shared narratives, rituals, monuments and institutions. His study aims to offer a perspective into the complex memoryscapes of southwest Benin and into the local identities, politics and cultural life.

As Simo dwells into the role of the past in contemporary Benin and local area, he investigates how and from which perspective the past is interpreted and on whose terms. He pays particular attention to whether the past is offered as a coherent narrative or whether different memory cultures are able to express their own views.

Through visits to museums, memorials and historical sites and in co-operation with local museums, historical societies and history specialists, Simo’s investigation into local memory cultures and manifestations of the past took shape.

The results of his project will eventually be published in a peer-reviewed research article. Simo’s long-term aim is to develop scholarly co-operation with Beninese scholars working on memory cultures and history. African history is still written from the European point of view despite extensive discussion on post-colonising science and with his work, Simo seeks to strengthen the local African voices and their own approaches to the past.

Thank you Simo for your stay in Villa Karo!

Photos 1, 2: Maikki Kantola

Adresse

Grand-Popo

Heures d'ouverture

Mardi	09:00 - 17:00
Mercredi	09:00 - 17:00
Jeudi	09:00 - 17:00
Vendredi	09:00 - 17:00
Samedi	10:00 - 14:00
Dimanche	10:00 - 14:00

Site Web

https://villakaro.org/

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