Kira Nova
Tongue PhD (2015), performance by Kira Nova, image by Joeri Thiry
In her performance practice, Kira Nova (born 1982) combines dance, humour, sculpture, and rhetoric into discursive chaos thereby developing methods of resisting established canons and superstitions.
Kira Nova first distinguished herself in Lithuania through her interdisciplinary choreographic practice and her work in the Coro Collective group together with Eglė Budvytytė and Goda Budvytytė. Her work is marked by what could be wrongly characterized as perversity: an anarchic, uncompromising deconstruction of accepted categories, in which all forms of tension are valid – from the slippery relationship between artistic and corporate language to the less obvious distinction between human and insect sexuality. In 2016, her performance ‘Tongue PhD’ became, to an artist with two graduate degrees in the Humanities, an independent doctoral process carried out through the most disciplined of human organs – the tongue. In her latest project, ‘Power Trip’ (2020), Nova offers movement and well-being coaching sessions for artists and anyone looking to experience the ecstasy of independence. The manifesto of this Power Trip abandons the vague categories of ‘creativity’ or ‘self-expression’; and the personal qualities that the artists develop during body-movement modules – the language of creativity, imagination, and bodily power – become monstrous in an otherwise de-powering world.
Kira Nova is active in visual arts and theatre; she has gained experience in circus performing as well as various dance, movement, and improvisation techniques. The artist’s performances and other works were presented in various global contemporary art galleries and institutions, including the Pompidou Centre in Paris, MoMA PS1, The Kitchen, the Sculpture Center and the Swiss Institute (all in New York), Hauser & Wirth in Zurich and New York, de Appel curatorial program in Amsterdam, Contemporary Art Centre in Vilnius, and elsewhere. Nova has participated in various contemporary art and dance festivals and biennials, including dOCUMENTA (13) in Kassel, Block Universe festival in London, and Playground festival at STUK in Leuven. In 2012, Kira Nova was a co-curator at Mindaugas Triennial – the 11th Baltic Triennial of International Art. She teaches at the Malmö Art Academy in Sweden and leads seminars and creative workshops at various European and North American universities.