Nina Kurtela
area: Visual Arts, Performance
Key Facts
nationality
Croatiaarea
Visual Arts, Performanceresidence
Zagrebrecommending institution
frei_raum Q21 exhibition spacetime period
June 2018 - June 2018Nina Kurtela is a visual artist and a dance maker who works with choreographic and site specific practices. Her work does not exclude any medium and her conceptual and multidisciplinary approach provides a chance to all means of production. She creates works across wide range of forms; namely video, installation, performance, choreography and dance. Her work is presented internationally in a variety of contexts – in museums and galleries, theater and dance festivals, and in public space. After 10 years in Berlin, she currently lives in Zagreb. She studied “Dance, Context, Choreography” at the HZT, UdKBerlin. And holds diploma in visual arts (BFA & MFA) from The Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb.
She presented her work in wide range of contexts such as: Tanz Im August, Berlin / Transmediale, Berlin / Survival Kit, Riga / X-border Art Biennial, Sweden / Museum of Contemporary Arts Zagreb / HKW Berlin / HDLU Zagreb / MUMOK Vienna / MUU Helsinki / 104 Paris / MMOMA Moscow / MUMOK Vienna / ARS AEVI Sarajevo / Glyptotheque HAZU Zagreb / National Museum of Kosovo Prishtina Kosovo / Museum of Contemporary Art Sofia, Bulgaria / Gallery of Contemporary Art Pančevo, Serbia.
She took part in Artist in Residency programs: Cite internationale des arts, Paris / THAV, Taipei, Taiwan / HIAP, Helsinki / GeoAIR, Tbilisi / CEC ArtsLink, Portland, Oregon / KulturKontakt Austria, Vienna / DanceWEB Europe, ImpulsTanz festival, Vienna.
And received following awards for her work: Japanese Media Arts New Face Award, Tokyo / X-border Art Biennial Award, Sweden / Henkel Art Award CEE, Vienna / Essl Art Award CEE, Vienna.
Kurtela worked as a dancer with Isabel Schad, Jasna Layes Vinovrski, Boris Charmatz, Yves Noel Genod, Isabel Lewis, Marjana Krajac.
How do we relate to a specific locality today, when the age of globalization has eclipsed into mass migrations, violent displacements, and ever-present instability? Where do we belong? What is home to us? And where do we find shelter, when nationalism is the new norm and hate, fear, and segregation push for stronger borders and higher walls? Is shelter a physical or perhaps an imaginary space?
In May 2016, we – Hana Erdman and Nina Kurtela –, two artists and two friends, made an agreement. Due to our frequent travels, precarious lives, rarely spending time in the same city where we live in, we decided to devote one year of our lives to building our own sphere of belonging: a one year long choreography.
The choreography of “365 routines” demonstrates the on-going communication between two different environments, locations, languages, identities, spaces and times. A common space is generated through the execution of this task. During the daily routines we engage in an imaginary space of belonging that is no longer physical or territorial. More over, it is an emotional space, an abstract space that detaches itself from the parameters of affiliation of whatever kind. In the course of the daily routines the exchange of movements between us through video gradually transforms dancing. Dancing becomes home for to us.
In continuation of the original, Nina Kurtela committed to learning all of the 365 routines from the movement archives as one incessant sequence. Through an ongoing daily practice she reiterates the choreography. By that a 48 minutes long live dance piece is being constructed currently.