ARTIST TALK: From Performance to Art Installation with Pêdra Costa and Verena Melgarejo Weinandt

The exhibition „101011“ marks a significant turning point in Pêdra Costa’s artistic process, as their work transitions from performance art to art installation, in a solo for the first time.

In the dialogue between Pêdra Costa and Verena Melgarejo Weinandt, the influential factors and concepts shaping the exhibition are explored through key themes such as symbolism, individuation, synchronicity, imagination, and both personal and collective un/conscious. Together, they delve into the blurred boundaries of art, alchemy, and self-knowledge, creating connections to Pêdra’s previous development, their life, changes, and inquiries.

The Artist Talk took place in the framework of the solo exhibition „101011“ by Pêdra Costa (Erste Bank Art Awardee 2023) exhibited in Das Weisse Haus gallery in Vienna until 27th of January 2024.

Verena Melgarejo Weinandt is a German-Bolivian/Quechua artist, curator, educator and researcher. She studied Fine Art and Art and Cultural Studies at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna and the Universidad Nacional de Bellas Artes Buenos Aires. In her artistic work she uses performances, textiles, photography, video and installations. In oftentimes ritualistic formats she uses her body and her (ancestral) history as tools to address colonial and patriarchal structures and search for ways of individual and collective healing for what she calls “arte-sana”.
In addition to numerous lectures and workshops, she has taught at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, the *foundationClass at Weißensee Kunsthochschule Berlin and in the Master’s program “Solo/Dance/Authorship” at the HZT of the Berlin University of the Arts. Her works have been exhibited at the Museo de Arte Contemporaneo Salta (Argentina), at the nGbK Berlin (Germany) and at the Biennial Sur Cúcuta (Colombia) and Buenos Aires (Argentina).

Pêdra Costa (Nova Iguaçu, 1978) is a formative Brazilian, visual and urban Anthropologist, Performer and Tarot Reader based in Berlin that utilizes intimacy to connect with collectivity. They work with their body to create fragmented epistemologies of queer communities within ongoing colonial legacies. While tapping into the powers of resilient knowledge from a variety of subversive ancestral cultures and spiritualities that were integral to anti-colonial and necropolitan survival, their work with the body seeks to decode violence and transform failure.