ABOUT

PIANKA is a queer non-binary post-Soviet performance artist working in the medium of body-based practices, exploring Baltic mythology, endurance, pain, pleasure, ritual, and movement. To understand the complexities of being a post-Soviet body, they examine the interrelations between folklore, queerness, BDSM, movement and the self through live performances as well as textural object-and garment-making.

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In intending to empower and re-construct queer post-Soviet livelihoods, the works exert

fear to activate a futurity whilst confronting the various nostalgic narratives which emerge from within the dark, murky hollows of the past to consequently distort and subvert its perception. The body harnesses its grief to acquire agency and community-feeling in the spaces it continually inhabits.

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As a former professional ballet dancer, PIANKA's performances are underpinned by the reception of their body in pain, its masking and its inherent mis-/gendering in movement. This is combined with duration, where the limits of the body are challenged in order to find nurturing and/or subversive effects and to question the socio-political conditions of a post-Soviet upbringing and its impositions on the queer non-binary. Altogether, their research seeks to find community within these feelings of misplacement while working alongside the deeply rooted histories and personal mythologies found within the self.

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Besides their own practise, PIANKA forms part of the BLT collective which produces events for emerging artists. 

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