Jana Sterbak
Born1955 (age 68–69)
Prague, Czechoslovakia
NationalityCzech-Canadian
EducationConcordia University
Awards1991 - John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship

1993 - Prix Antoine Guichard, Fondation Casino (France)

1995 - Prix Ozias-Leduc

2012 - Governor General's Awards in Visual and Media Arts

2017 - Prix Paul-Émile-Borduas
Websitehttp://www.janasterbak.com/

Jana Sterbak (Jana Štěrbáková) is a multidisciplinary artist of Czech origin.

Life and career

Sterbak earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts at Concordia University,[1] completing classes in film history with John Locke and Tom Waugh, as well as painting with Yves Gaucher [2] Guido Molinari. In the 1980s, she studied art history at the University of Toronto and at New York University, ultimately abandoning her studies to dedicate herself to her artistic practice.[1] In her artistic approach, performance is incorporated into her photography, film, and video installations.

In the 1990s, Sterbak moved to Paris to teach at the École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts (ENSBA). At age 36, a retrospective of her work was held at the National Gallery of Canada (1991) and subsequently shown at MIT in Boston [3] and at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego (1992).[4]

Her European career began in 1990 at Aperto,[5] the international section of the Venice Biennale, where co-curator Bernard Blistène chose to present her work. Several solo shows followed: in 1992, at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art (Denmark) and at the MoMA New York,[6] where one of her iconic installations, Sisyphus, was presented (this work then joined MAC Marseille's collection,) and in 1993 at La Caixa Foundation in Barcelona.[7] Velleitas, a solo exhibition curated by Corinne Diserens was presented in 1995 at the Musee d’art moderne of Saint-Étienne and at Fundació Antoni Tàpies in Barcelona,[8] and at the Serpentine Gallery in London in 1996.[9]

In the early 2000s, she produced two video installations. The first, From Here to there, represented Canada at the 2003 Venice Biennale; the second, Waiting for High Water, shot in Venice during the acqua alta phenomenon, was presented at the Prague Biennale in 2005. Waiting for High Water became her most exhibited video installation (catalogue text from Hubert Damisch.)[10]

In 2012, Sterbak, a Canadian citizen since her twentieth birthday, received a Governor General’s Award in the Visual and Media Arts,[11] and in 2017, she won the Prix Paul-Émile-Borduas (Quebec).[12]

"Her biography may not be directly reflected in her works, but it has provided a pool of experience for an examination of the question of how different societies are connected with one another. These are questions pertaining to human conflicts in contemporary life, to the tension between the private and public spheres, and between freedom and dependence. Jana Sterbak’s works are as poetic as they are political. They are conceptually precise, interweaving the immediacy of specific materials with references to motifs from mythology, literature, and philosophy. Her materials are often ephemeral and transformative, such as the ice that forms the slowly melting chairs of Dissolution-Auditorium, or the pieces of flesh sewn together to make a dress in her famous and much-discussed work and widely copied Vanitas: Flesh Dress for an Albino Anorexic."[13] Both are powerful metaphors for social as well as physical processes that speak to us explicitly on a personal and sensory level.

Awards

References

  1. 1 2 "Prix Ozias-Leduc | Jana Sterbak".
  2. ↑ "Yves Gaucher | l'Encyclopédie Canadienne".
  3. ↑ "Jana Sterbak: States of Being | MIT List Visual Arts Center". listart.mit.edu. 2022-01-13. Retrieved 2022-11-28.
  4. ↑ Ollman, Leah (24 December 1992). "Sterbak Sculptures Flirt With Profundity". LA Times.
  5. ↑ https://artmap.com/labiennaledivenezia/exhibition/la-biennale-di-venezia-1990-1990
  6. ↑ "Projects 38: Jana Šterbák | MoMA". The Museum of Modern Art. Retrieved 2022-12-02.
  7. ↑ "Jana Sterbak, Sala Montcada, La Caixa Foundation, Barcelona, Spain, 1992". Rosa Martinez. 30 May 1992. Retrieved 2022-11-30.
  8. ↑ "Jana Sterbak. Velleitas".
  9. ↑ "Small is beautiful". The Independent. 1996-01-28. Retrieved 2022-11-30.
  10. ↑ Sterbak, Jana (2006). Waiting for High Water. Hubert Damisch, Centre culturel canadien. Paris: Collection Esplanade, Centre culturel canadien. ISBN 1-896940-41-2. OCLC 76814558.
  11. ↑ "2012 Governor General's Awards in Visual and Media Arts". Retrieved 27 November 2022.
  12. ↑ "Jana Sterbak". 31 October 2017.
  13. ↑ Soke Dinkla, Jana Sterbak: Life-Size, Innsbruck, Duisburg, Taxispalais Innsbruck, Lehmbruck Museum Duisburg. 27 July 2017, 140 p.
  14. ↑ "Jana Sterbak". John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Retrieved 2023-02-04.
  15. ↑ "Prizes". Canada Council. Retrieved 16 August 2022.


This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.