03/05/2024, 7:30 pm,

Ania Nowak, To the Aching Parts (Manifesto)!

, Kunsthalle Münster

Ania Nowaks perfomance To the Aching Parts! (Manifesto) is a public speech wich dissects the language used by and against queer communities today. Devoid of grammar, the text is subjected to the order and pleasure of rythm. Commissioned by HAU Hebbel am Ufer, Berlin in the frame of Manifestos for Queer Futures, the performance relies on historic references to militancy by minorities to address the dangers of normativity and the need for embodied intersectionality when forming queer alliances today. By taking liberty to play around with the language of resentment and trauma as well as empathy and healing, it proposes to destabilize identities, practices and well known acronyms like LGB or FtM for the sake of a queer future we have yet to envisage.

Nowak keeps reciting repetitive words and phrases in her performance. Following on from this it is not only a work about the appropriation of an originally harmful language (as was the case with the English word „queer“), but above all about the fact that the meanings of language are fluid and sensitive to context—a word repeated too often ceases to mean anything and reveals its inner twistedness and the nonsense inherent in every sense.

Ania Nowak (b. 1983 in Krakow, Poland) approaches vulnerability and desire as ways towards reimagining what bodies and language can and cannot do. Nowak develops formats such as live and video performance, installation and text. In her practice Ania engages with bodies in their nonlinear feeling and thinking capacity to tackle the difficulties of companionship and care in times of perpetual crisis. Her work attempts to reimagine the notions of disorder, pleasure, disease, intimacy, pain, sexuality, class and accessibility as sites of binary free living. Nowak collaborates with alternative educational programs in Eastern Europe, such as Kem School in Warsaw and the School of Kindness in Sofia. Ania’s works have been presented at Berlinische Galerie (2020), HAU Hebbel am Ufer (2019), Akademie der Künste (2020), KW Pogo Bar (2023), Sophiensaele, Berlin (2023), Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, Helsinki (2023), La Casa Encendida, Madrid (2021), Nowy Teatr, Warsaw (2018), 14th Baltic Triennial, Vilnius (2021) and 12th Gothenburg Biennial (2023), a.o. Nowak recently held solo shows at the Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw (2023) and Galerie Wedding – Raum für zeitgenössische Kunst, Berlin (2023).