Jana Sterbak is a Canadian artist best known for her conceptual sculptures that are made about and in relation to the body.
Born in Prague, Czechoslovakia, Sterbak immigrated in 1968 to Canada as a teenager with her parents. She attended the Vancouver School of Art (now Emily Carr University of Art and Design) in 1973-74 and the University of British Columbia in 1974-75 before moving to Montréal to complete her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1977 at Concordia University.
It is worth noting the intense Czech culture that Sterbak was surrounded by and continues to appreciate, as strong enrichment references in her ironic and often pessimistic artwork. Coming from this background “it is not surprising, then, that the theme of constraint, imposed from within and from without, should have become a major preoccupation in her work”
Sterbak uses constraints for the body in her work, a common concern has been to wed the physical to the psychological, placing mind on an equal footing with matter. Many of her pieces use the human body to carry the desires and constraints of society and have involved fitting the body into some kind of outer garment. These works question the working of the will, suggesting that we may be freer than we want to be. The notion of empathy or ‘thinking in’ plays an important role in Sterbak’s work. Her installation ‘Golem: Objects as Sensations’ (1979-82) works on a number of levels, we can at least enter at one level. The work comprises of three framed prints and parts of the body cast in bronze and lead. The parts are laid out on the ground, like a spine, or a fuse waiting to come alive. In this state they can be perceived as offerings which represent the function of an organ in life or carry the deceased in afterlife, or of the Roman custom of reading the entrails. Sterbak was familiar with the phenomenon of phantom limbs, in which amputees continue to feel sensations connected to their missing limbs.
Golem’s representations of the body’s parts, inner and outer, refer us to what the body represents. Each organ, heart, spleen, stomach, has its own significance and is associated with a humour and with disease, with both life and death. The outer parts which are included, a hand, a tongue, a penis, an ear, a throat, relate to our body’s interaction with the outside world. This makes reference to Kristeva’s theory on abjection, the inner and outer boundaries protruding onto each other and threatening a human identity which in turn repulses the individual. These parts were first modelled in plasticine and it was only as Sterbak transposed them into metal, lead, then bronze, that she became tuned to the seriousness of the material. These materials have their own meanings too, their own density and gravity, with this we are brought to a consideration of the meaning of materials, which is an element in which I like to consider and reference within my work, materiality is an element that confronts my themes and identifies to the spectator about the of my work. Furthermore with Sterbak’s work the three photographs purport to re-present a penis in dry ice, a stomach in frozen mercury and a heart in radioactive fermium. These portraits of material take us beyond the object itself and into the atmosphere.
Sterbak investigate the human condition, dealing with themes such as power and sexuality, using a language that doesn’t fear experimentation, going from performance to art installation from photography to sculpture. Her art is always balancing between strong conceptual contrast and powerful aesthetics. The weird objects and clever contraptions produce an attractive series of works, they seduce and scare, making people think about the themes they represent. In one exhibition called ‘Human condition: the limits of our freedom’ her art goes from works produced in the eighties up until present day.
They paralysed body of a human being imprisoned by life with an uncertain identity is how Sterbak displays the people that are protagonist of her photos. Sterbak explained ‘For me it’s a matter of transforming ideas into forms, because having ideas is always very nice, but it’s not demanding, while transforming ideas into physical realities is something challenging and for me it’s a way of being in the world, of learning and getting new stimulation’ She goes onto say ‘So, depending on the different things that I produce, I need help and information. The research is the most interesting part. For me, creating is a learning process. Ideas evolve through the necessity to make them concrete, giving them substance and a shape. This informs me about issues that are not necessarily formal issues.’
What drew me to Sterbak’s work was her sculptural constraints that confine the body in her work. The various forms of cages that she creates and often attached to performers are humorous yet slightly sadistic. Sterbak depicts the body and stands-ins for it, in the form of furniture and clothing, to explore the relationship between the physical and psychological selves. The dilemma she presents is the struggle between one’s will to action and the inevitable limitation that impede independence. She stages this predicament within the body, exploring attendant issues of desire in works that are simultaneously sceptical and emotional. The most recent body contraption in the exhibition is Condition (1995). The sculptural element is a tail-like, metal appendage that can be strapped to one’s back. The accompanying video shows a man running around with the gadget, which acts as a burden and paradoxically a facilitator of movement, an extension of his body on wheels. Another absurd performance occurs in Sisyphus (1991). A large vessel made of metal rods accompanies video documentation of a man precariously poised inside a similar prop, trying to maintain his equilibrium while in perpetual motion. In the Greek myth of Sisyphus, a man is condemned in perpetuity to roll a boulder up a hill only to have it tumble back down before reaching the top.
I Want You To Feel the Way I Do….
There’s barbed wire wrapped all around my head and my skin grates on my flesh from the inside. How can you be so comfortable only 5” to the left of me? I don’t want to hear myself think, feel myself move. It’s not that I want to be numb, I want to slip under your skin: I will listen for the sounf you hear, feed on your thought, and wear your clothes. Now I have your attitude and you’re not comfortable anymore. Making them yours you relieved me of my opinions, habits and impulses. I should be grateful but instead… you’re beginning to irritate me: I am not going to live with myself inside you body, and I would rather practice being new on someone else.
