Live artwork. Beyond the boundaries of performance: Eva & Adele
Live artwork. Beyond the boundaries of performance: Eva & Adele

Summary/Abstract: The article focuses on the creative work of two Berlin artists, EVA & ADELE, who for over twenty years have frequented the most important art events, including the Venice Biennale, the Documenta in Kassel or the Art Basel fair. The artists describe their actions as performance in public space, in which the general public plays a significant role by documenting the actions and interacting with the artists. Their stylized larger-than-life femininity belying their shaved heads, EVA & ADELE address social issues in their art, postulating the right of individuals to define their own gender freely. Employing EVA & ADELE as a case study, the article reflects on the contemporary definition of performance: the specific nature of the phenomenon, its semantic range and the role that it plays in the reception of art. EVA & ADELE's work is part of an artistic thread with a rich tradition in contemporary art – the actions based on artists’ interventions in the sphere of their own bodies. However, the artists from Berlin have gone further than most of their predecessors, who simply use their body as an artistic medium. EVA & ADELE are a consistent creation, which demands from them great personal commitment and sacrifice. By maintaining their performance 24 hours a day, as they would have us believe, they have crossed new frontiers of body art performance into a brave new world where art becomes synonymous with life itself.

• Details
• Contents