Jana Sterbak

(Prague, Czechia, 1955)

Multidisciplinary visual artist known for her sculptures, performances, videos, photographs and installations. After the Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia, he moved with his family to Canada where he studied Fine Arts. The ironic realism of Czech culture permeates his artistic work, which is of great conceptual strength. The body is the central theme of his work, a physical element associated with power, control, seduction and also technology. Sterbak produces objects often posed as physical prostheses or bodily technological artifacts. The materials he uses and the objects he makes suggest intimate relationships with the human body. Modeled organs, clothes made of meat, different types of cages and other containment mechanisms generate meanings that allude to the body. They are icons of the vulnerability of the flesh and remind us that we are subject to an unavoidable process of growth and degeneration. In his performances, videos, objects and installations, he plays with irony, the absurd and also with basic emotions such as fear or desire. In general, Sterbak proposes mental and physical objects and spaces in which the viewer's experience is paramount. These are almost always objects to be used in a real or fictitious way (costumes, crowns, perfumes, furniture) for this reason, the videographic element acquires great significance in the performative work of this artist, the video not only documents the pieces presented, but also teaches the experiences contained in them. All of sterbak's work moves in a constant ambiguity and spirit of contradiction; Thus, his pieces evoke the intimate relationship between attraction and aversion, between pain and desire, between the masculine and the feminine. Perspiration: Olfactory Portrait (1995) is a perfume made from the sweat of the artist's partner, and the Hair T-shirt (1992) is a piece of women's clothing with men's hair incorporated at chest level.

His work was present at MediaLab with the pieces Chair Apollinaire (1996), a polyester chair covered with meat, and Cake Stool (1996), a metal chair covered with cake. Ephemeral materials with which he questions the idea of perenniality in the work of art.