FR/EN

NANA BILUŠ ABAFFY is an artist with a background in philosophy and a foreground in experimental performance and choreography. Nana takes a maximalist approach to artistic endeavor and works through dance, text, play, moving image and social intervention. She is interested in the pursuit of knowledge through embodiment and wants to know what her body is looking for. Nana believes that there is irreducible variation in the human experience and works towards establishing a space for that difference in search of landscapes where alterities can be envisioned. She is the founding member of a secretive collective that performs in explicitly illicit spaces and enjoys engaging in ChoreoGraphic acts of extreme tree hugging and site specific protest dancing.

Nana has been mentored by choreographer Meg Stuart since 2018. She has been making fiercely independent work since 2013: in afterhours biomedical libraries, galleries, theatres, forests, heritage buildings, supermarkets, private apartments, fields, former women’s prisons, carparks, religious halls, dance institutions, soon to be demolished office buildings, and some more dance and art institutions (in that exact order). In 2022, Nana is due to present new choreographic work at Chunky Move. In 2021 Nana undertook an artist residency and creative development at Beursschouwburg. In 2020 [cancelled] Nana was due to present new video/live performance work with collaborator artist Parvin Saljoughi for the 2020 Tehran Contemporary Sculpture Biennial; and was commissioned by Chunky Move to present a new choreographic/expanding cinema work there, as part of the 2020 Next Wave Festival in Melbourne (postponed). She also undertook the Chunky Move Solitude residency; and contributed to ArtStations Foundation online works.

In 2019, Nana presented a live performance/video work curated by Flash Art Magazine, as part of the exhibition ‘Rooze Mabada’, at Giardino Segreto Palazzo Durini in Milan; presented choreographic work that was selected as part of the Live Works Performance Award at the 2019 Drodesera Festival; was an artist in residence at Centrale Fies Art Work Space in Italy; and at workspacebrussels where she showed work at the Kaaistudios. Nana was commissioned to present POST REALITY VISION [private parts one to three] at the biannual Dance Massive Festival / Dancehouse Melbourne; and was an Arts House CultureLAB artist in residence.

In 2018, Nana was a finalist in the Keir Choreographic Award, commissioned by the Keir Foundation, Carriageworks Sydney, and Dancehouse Melbourne, for her work POST REALITY VISION [part zero]; presented the experimental choreographic work INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY FOR THE CREATIVELY MALADJUSTED episode 104 as part of the biannual Melbourne Festival of Live Art, supported by Phillip Adams BalletLab and Theatreworks; undertook an artist residency with and was commissioned by Santarcangelo Festival in Italy to present ISFTCM episode 105; was invited to undertake the res+ref artist residency as part of Kunstenfestivaldesarts in Brussels; and was commissioned by Runway Experimental Art Magazine to make a video based art work for their dance edition.

In 2017, Nana undertook an artist residency with and was commissioned by the biannual Underbelly Arts Lab & Festival to present ISFTCM episode 103; and was commissioned by Lucy Guerin Inc to present RIP Meatdog…Meatdog Lives! as part of P4SS. In 2016, Nana was supported by the dance boards of the Australia Council for the Arts and the Ian Potter Cultural Trust to train with choreographers Ivo Dimchev, Trajal Harrell, Mårten Spångberg, playwright Mark Ravenhill, and video artist Tacita Dean; and was involved in the creation of an ABC documentary on the iconic underground urban explorer group The Cave Clan. In 2015, Nana was selected to participate in a director’s masterclass with Romeo Castellucci at the 2015 Venice Biennale of Theatre; and was involved in the creation and realisation of iliads, a durational dance performance piece led by artist Ben Speth. Nana’s work has received further support from the Victorian Government through Creative Victoria; City of Port Phillip Cultural Development Fund; FCAC Artist Residency; Bluestone Arts Space; the Croatian Institute of Movement and Dance and Zagreb Dance Centre.

Nana completed her Master of Fine Arts at the Institut Supérieur des Arts et Chorégraphies – Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts de Bruxelles in 2021. She also holds a First Class Honours degree in Philosophy and has been awarded a Postgraduate Scholarship in Creative Writing. She received an Australian Postgraduate Award for her thesis dealing with the Aeschylean tragic cycle and satyr play in connection to artists Kazimir Malevich, Marcel Duchamp, VALIE EXPORT and Martha Graham. Nana has served on the editorial committee of peer reviewed arts journal Colloquy: text theory critique, as well as on the committee of the postgraduate Faculty of Arts Colloquium at Monash University. Nana is a published researcher and has been invited to present her work on ancient tragedy at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama and at Oxford University. She is currently on the panel for the Australia Council for the Arts, as well as for the City of Melbourne Arts. Nana is a Zagreb born, Melbourne/Brussels based alien.

Ⓒ NANA BILUŠ ABAFFY