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2016, Amsterdam. A drawing, collage book made in collaboration with Steven Lenoir. The book was for sale in the art book shop San Serriffe in Amsterdam and in the Galerie Emmy Miltenburg, Schiedam.

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It is a book about growing up and finding oneself in absurd social contexts and trying to orientate in it.

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“The book Arta Balina produced in the summer of 2016 is wonderful pile-up.

As an object, it’s modern and old-school at the same time. It’s got 3mm thick (but ridiculously light) pages that got lasercut texts and images. But it also has low-tech pages with an air of old stencilmachines and copiers.

As a production, it’s both meticulous and raw. The laser cutting is so precise it turns even a quickly made notation into a ‘definite version’ of itself. On the other hand the book also features torn paper as backdrop, fuzzy photographs and under-and-over saturated printing.

As for its content, it’s both carefree and painfully observant. The drawings are quick, but deal with universal and lasting issues. The size and nature of the pages almost suggests a children’s book, but the content touches on subjects one can only get to by having lived quite a bit.

It results in a book of delightful complexity and contradiction.”

Maarten de Reus
tutor Gerrit Rietveld Academy

 

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A moving metaphor. An open audiovisual sculpture. This work is my visual contemplation on personal space, body, control and connection. At the core of this video work is my contemplation on the question of personal autonomy and how this sense relates to other people. How much autonomy and space in real and metaphorically do I have in my own body, in my daily life, during my breakfast?

 

I am creating a moving sculpture in a form of a video. Before I started, I was wondering – how would it be to build a video like a sculpture? While I was busy creating the set – welding spoons and seats, I had a feeling that the objects, which took shape in my hands, will communicate by themselves. This work is an experimental mixture of controlled craftsmanship, freedom of performers and decisions about what has to be captured through the lens of the camera.

Having been working in a quick service restaurant during my last year of Rietveld, it has been a joy to extend the cutlery, leaving no other choice to my performers as to take it slow. Taking the time to eat and to be in the moment.

This moving metaphor a link with Jewish folklore that talks about feeding. Today societies that used to be open are more closed because of outer factors in the world, but we hang in and can only demonstrate our own tolerance and openness to the people we are confronted with.

 

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2015 (April) —- Skinship, performance EYE on Art: Magnify – Magnifying, The EYE museum, Amsterdam. The performance “Skinship” in collaboration with Anna Dorota Radzimirska and Yulia Ratman. The subject of the performance is the lost language of physical touch. One performer is filming close ups of the physical interaction between the other two performers and the audience. The image is projected live on the cinema screen. The play between physical presence and live-filmed image became holistic. This project augments the classical perception in the cinema up to a bizarre possibility and create a literal experience with the story on the screen. The game of a creator, viewer and and the purpose of the location is present here. The performance took place the in the Eye cinema and film museum in Amsterdam.

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Video work commissioned by Noord/Zuidlijn metro line project, Amsterdam. This video is inspired by the work in progress by Amalia Pica – an artist who is making an artwork for the Pijp metro station in Amsterdam. Large wall paintings where the colours of the Pijp district are dripping down the the walls of the metro station. I decided to make a journey through these colours and I wrote a travelling poem for it.