Mission
POPE JOAN creates work for women unearthing the past to confront the chaos of the present. Our projects dive into the rage, fear, collapse, and hunger that shape modernity. We ask what it means to fall apart and rebuild again. We examine the histories that have shaped womanhood through to the digital age, navigating the tension between fury and grace, crying for why and how we got here. We aim to challenge a world that has taught us to be afraid, seeing life for what it is and what it may be.
Through a multidisciplinary practice, we push the boundaries of form and content, blending the philosophical with the physical, the intimate with the sublime. Founded by artists Kyndall Sillanpaa and Sophie Vincent, whose work spans design, theatre, and film, POPE JOAN challenges what performance can be, demanding it evolve.
Our work is unflinching, made for those yearning for change, choosing to try, and looking to return to themselves.
Who is pope joan?
Pope Joan is the legendary woman who, hidden beneath a male disguise, ascended to the papacy in the 9th century — only to be exposed when she gave birth in public, a moment later retold as scandal, punishment, or divine retribution. Whether she lived or not matters less than what her myth reveals: a world terrified of women who cross boundaries, claim authority, or exist outside the roles prescribed to them. Over centuries, her story has been twisted into a cautionary tale about female ambition and desire, yet she endures as a symbol of defiance—a figure who forces us to confront how power reacts when women step into spaces it was never built to hold them. Pope Joan is less a historical footnote than an archetype of resistance echoing through every woman who has dared to remake the world on her own terms.