ABOUT PASI
Pasi Räbinä is a Finnish costume designer for theatre, opera, musical and modern dance. He received his Master of Arts degree from Aalto University (Helsinki), the Design for Theatre, Film and Television-Costume Design programme. Räbinä's career has spanned over thirty-five years and he has worked on more than a hundred productions with more than forty directors. In 2019, Räbinä received the Illusion Award in recognition of his diverse career as a stage costume designer and a creative artist.
Costume designs for theatre Räbinä has worked on include Kaboom and the Power of Imagination, Shakespeare in Love, Dangerous Liaisons, Heavensong, The Midwife, Cabaret, Amadeus, Queen C, Life and Death, Romeo and Juliet, The Archangel in Oulu and Decamerone. He has designed several opera costumes for e.g. Fidelio, Where Four Roads Meet, Orpheus and Eurydice, The Tales of Hoffmann, La Bohème, Un Ballo in Maschera, The Medium, Messenius and Lucia, The Barber of Sevilla, Rusalka and Die Fledermaus.
Musicals include such works as My Fair Lady, The Addams Family, The Full Monty, Fiddler on the Roof, The Suitors, Can Can, Petronella and The Emperor’s Waltz. Additionally, Räbinä has executed the costume design for modern dance productions, in collaboration with Oulu Dance Centre Jojo, various dance groups and choreographers with Jorma Uotinen, Alpo Aaltokoski, Jyrki Karttunen, Petri Kauppinen and Pirjo Yli-Maunula.
Presently Räbinä works as a costume designer at the Oulu City Theatre. Before that Räbinä functioned as freelancer designer at the city theatres of Kuopio, Jyväskylä, Kokkola and Vaasa.
Räbinä also works as a visual artist with several private and group exhibitions both in Finland and abroad. The most recent being the Art Couture exhibition with visual artist Moosa Myllykangas at the Oulu Museum of Art and Gallery Harmaja. My Landscape was his exhibition at Galleria 5 in Oulu and at the Craft Biennale in South Korea. Räbinä's stage costumes and printed fabrics were displayed at The Print of Beauty exhibition in the Helsinki Theatre Museum and the exhibition Bohemians and Bourgeoisie was housed at the Valve gallery in Oulu. The unique costumes of the Glacier exhibition participated in the Aito exhibition at the Oulu Museum of Art.
Several group exhibitions at the Helsinki Theater Museum have displayed Räbinä's designs, e.g. The Dreams Wefts and Backstage. Räbinä represented Finnish costume design at the Prague Quadrennial scenography exhibition in 2007 and 2019.
Illusion Award 2019
During his career of more than 35 years, Räbinä has developed insightful material experiments that have created unforgettable illusions for viewers. Räbinä received the Illusion Award in recognition of his diverse career as a stage costume designer and a creative artist.
The Finnish costume designer Pasi Räbinä’s work in costume design with a focus on his fabric dyeing, printing and painting methods to create stage costumes. He reflects on his material-driven creative process for the design of costumes and provides insights on his approach, to get under the skin of the characters
Joanna Weckman
Doctor of Arts, Researcher
and Exhibition curator
Costumes designed by Pasi Räbinä emphasise that the use of different materials is not an end to itself, rather, it is primarily about the content of the piece. The choice of materials and methods is a part of visual story-telling for him, a stylistic device and a tool.
Sofia Pantouvaki
Professor of Costume design for
Theatre and film, Aalto University
All rights reserved © Pasi Räbinä