Zhana Ivanova produces works in the field of performance and time-based arts. The patterns and systems to which we accustom within daily experience are of central interest. She attempts forms, which are inherent to the subjects in question. Her constructions are initially formal and rule-governed, yet within those she insistently exposes the ambiguity of her own rules.
The Bulgarian-born, Amsterdam-based performance artist Zhana Ivanova (b. 1977) will have her first institutional solo show at Kunsthalle Basel. The nature of her performances often involves revealing, on the one hand, the underlying codes, rules, and structures in society, and, on the other hand, a form of prediction or future tense; thus her exhibition proposes to operate a bit like her work, revealing something about the codes, rules, and structures of exhibition making and setting those into an indeterminate future.
Called Ongoing Retrospective, it will reverse the typical nature of the retrospective—as something that comes at the end of an older artist's career and looks back—since here we will start at the beginning of this young artist's career and look forward. Her exhibition of performanc...