Zuzanna Nazaruk

I’m a student, creator, manager. I spent the last 3 years pursuing a bachelor in Management of International Social Challenges while simultaneously building up my path as a performance artist and an art manager. The result is KONTRA: an initiative run by me and my partner, that tries to explore the boundaries of artmaking in Rotterdam. Being a creative director of KONTRA allows us to put our artistic and social agenda forward in the city of Rotterdam, a process that I will elaborate further on below as it is our main motivation to apply for RESHAPE.

I see myself as a particular type of a sponge. Having one foot in the art industry through various collaborations that I managed to forge, such as with WORM Rotterdam, Showroom MAMA, Roodkapje Rotterdam or the Performance Bar, allows me to keep track of the recent trends in experimental art. At the same time, my second foot stands firmly in the field of academia and public policy, which gives me an invaluable insight into the geopolitical situation worldwide through an institutional lens. My artistic practice focuses on challenging the current status quo through means of satire and comedy.

Previous projects that I took part in included a performance on borderline personality disorder (‘Borderline Translations’, 2017), a performance on money, body issues and slavery (‘Richest Friends’, 2019), a commedia dell’arte performance (‘The king is dead long live the king’, 2018) or a performance on the relationship between the body and the emotions (‘Body in motion’, 2018). My most recent project is directing a physical theatre play on plastic pollution in the oceans that will be shown during Erasmus Sustainability Days: its aim is to inform and urge action through showing distorted, exaggerated dystopia of our world.