vanakostayola@yahoo.co.uk

Vana Kostayola creates performative situations involving dance and theater artists. Her work draws inspiration from psychoanalysis, anthropology, the maternal condition, and the medical questions into their socio-political context .

In “$mothering” she performed a love-hate word generated relationship. Through free association, metonymy and strange metaphors, the performers were trying to “clean” their speech-into-relation using swearing and banalising “bad” words.

During the latest performance, “Democratic Exercises – Body at Risk,” presented in Linz, Vienna, and Geneva, the artist staged combat exercises and conflict situations to problematize the excesses of political correctness (WOKE).

The theater show “ANAP – Medicalization and Rituals” is inspired by obstetric violence.

In “Inside_Out,” a four-hour performance, the protagonist, Marie, was portrayed by seven performers representing different facets of a “woman-mother.” Sometimes a “control freak,” sometimes experiencing jouissance, often alone, and suffering from dissociative disorders, she reinvented herself on her therapist’s couch.

During “Women Telling the Future” the audience engaged in absurd acts—such as crawling with hammers—before participating in a traditional Greek coffee reading ritual. Blending real and fictional rituals, the performance staged a question on the “exotization” of everyday female bonding activities.

At the performance “Conference of Neo-Citizens,” held in the courtyard of the Geneva City Hall during “Democracy Week,” the audience voted on futuristic questions regarding transhumanism and emerging technologies.

Vana co-curated “Twisting C(r)ash” at the Batiment d’Art Contemporain of Geneva and in Athens, with greek and swiss artists reflecting on the monetary crisis of 2010, where Greece was found a protaginist.

Kostayola organised at Goldmiths university the “Rematerializing Aesthetic Conference”, a re-enactment of a “Neuro-aesthetics” conference previously held at the same auditorium.

Vana co-founded KavecS with Kostis Stafylakis in 2004, and their work was presented amongst others, in Palais de Tokyo, Steirischer Herbst in Graz, Monodrome 3d Athens Biennale , Media Impact at the 4th Moscow Biennial. 

Their projects include “Team Building” (2006) that simulated a firm providing team-building services and “Rebirth Therapy Group” (2007) that enacted a new-age therapy team promising to enhance corporate performance.

“Black Circle” was a series of performances (Athens, Moscow, Graz, Paris) on the radical political right.

“Karmaway” video-installation-performance explored the Network Marketing.

“Coitus-Colafus-Colax” was a collective inquiry into the mechanics of Greek citizenship, examining its inherent legal impasses and the cultural narratives that sustain them.

Association KAVECS
37 rue Prévost-Martin
1205
Geneva