Irma Optimisti (real name Irma Anita Luhta; née Yliaho, born 1952 in Vaasa ) is a mathematician, performance artist, and curator living in Helsinki. She is one of the early pioneers of Finnish performance art, and her performances have also received international attention. Luhta graduated with a master's degree from the University of Oulu and in 1997 defended her doctoral thesis in chaos theory at the University of Vaasa, with a topic of structural changes in complex systems. From 1984 to 1999, she worked as a researcher and teacher at the University of Vaasa, and from 2001, she was a lecturer in mathematics at the Turku School of Economics. Irma Optimisti's ironic and parodic performances often address feminism, mathematics and chaos.
