Through the realm of public art, Mara Verna\’s work personifies notions of difference as staged personas that enter into particular enviroments, using visual, aural, and social gesture as markers that act upon, even at times parody, the personal and social forces of power that already exist.Not wanting to placate or to soothe, the work makes strange the familiar so that engagement, in face of the unforeseen, isn’t governed by expectation. Here, the question of self-representation and representing others is a problem that needs to be kept alive, held captive in the struggle to challenge where art is located and for whom it is intended…
\’Inspired from a text written about my first impressions of Johannesburg, South Africa, Same Same stages the embodied use of applied prosthetics as a means to re-negotiate the boundaries of engagement whereby context itself becomes a critical element to speak about the ways in which history is writing living peoples out of access to their own culture…”
Mara Verna
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Since receiving her B.F.A. at Concordia University (Montreal) in 1998, Mara Verna has traveled broadly to produce work in the realm of public art and the live art document. She has participated in solo exhibitions, group shows, and festivals within South Africa, Canada, France, Great Britain, Germany, Mexico, and currently Slovenia.
As invited lecturer, she has taught at the University of Cape Town, The South African Centre for Photography, Witwatersrand University, and Concordia University.
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The programme has been realised in collaboration with Mesto Žensk/ City of Women Festival from Ljubljana, Slovenia
http.//www.cityofwomen-a.si
