I am a multidisciplinary artist and cultural scholar from Ukraine (Izmail, Odesa region) currently based in Austria. In my nomadic career, creative projects interlace with academic ones, but my main focus remains the same: the human body in motion, through which I explore the interconnection between bodily freedom, dance, and politics.
My educational background is in Dance Anthropology (Choreomundus International master’s programme, 2018-2020) and Political Geography (Taras Shevchenko University, Kyiv, Ukraine, 2012-2014). Such a combination allowed me to obtain quite a unique scholarly perspective and research interest: Soviet and post-Soviet dancing body as a political tool. My long-term study focuses on Soviet dance as an instrument of cultural propaganda. I also examine how the Soviet-established aesthetic norms shape present-day cultural products in post-Soviet countries. Another important direction of my research emerged as a result of my international studies and exposure to non-Western cultures: I’m invested in topics of Othering and Belonging, Orientalism, Eurocentrism, and mental mapping of the West/Eastern Europe/East divides. As a migrant, I also work closely with the topic of displacement and the idea of Body as a Home.
My core artistic background includes dance, documentary and physical theatre, performance and other disciplines that use the body as a main creative tool. Although my artistic practice emerged through disciplines designed for public display, at the moment, I prioritize the inward-directed performative exploration that does not depend upon an immediate observer. Through site-specific interventions, I explore my own body’s potential to interact with the space and integrate into the environment in an unexpected way.
Maria Kardash 