The siSTARS ‘Dance a little more'

Anna Korver

Title: The siSTARS ‘Dance a little more’
Date: 2023

Medium: steel

Artist description:

These pieces were all made in Benin, West Africa where I now live for most of the year. They are from a faceted dress series that celebrate the female form and spirit. These particular pieces have been inspired by the fabrics and clothing here in Benin which are vibrant and full of life and color. As a group they remind me of the friendships and connections we develop between our groups of female friends.

Bio: 

Anna Korver has dual nationalities – New Zealand and Benin. She currently divides her time at home and overseas. She has been a full time professional sculptor since completed a BFA in sculpture from the University of Canterbury in 2003. Korver works nationally and internationally on exhibition work and private and public commissions. She has been selected in the Wallace awards twice, invited to exhibit work in many large scale outdoor sculpture exhibitions including Brick Bay sculpture Trail and Tai Tapu sculpture garden and has attended more than 80 national and international sculpture symposiums. Korver’s works combine a balance of contemporary and traditional sculpting processes and are feminine in their identity and perspective, inviting intimacy and personal connection. The forms are minimalist and strive to reflect the inner self or feeling onto the outer surface. Her work previously projected concepts from an internal place, but currently reflect more about the current situation or experience both personally and globally. The fundamental concepts generally revolve around the defence and protection of women but often from a subtle, gentle place. They question and challenge traditional feminine roles, offering a different kind of strength where the masculine and feminine sides are in balance and delicate, fragility is recognised instead of seen as a weakness, reflecting on feminism’s advocacy for equality for both genders.

Korvers’ recent works have moved into several specific series, where the human experience is described from different perspectives both literal and metaphorical; internalized and externalized. Some look at underlying questions about home as a transient concept using symbols such as the figure, the cube, vessels and sections of the landscape as reference to certain support systems we depend upon. These works explore the idea of home as an abstract term sometimes inspiring a feeling of separation, restriction or entrapment, armament and defence and other times an escape, shelter, sanctuary or protection. Her recent works are continuously curious about the connection of architecture to the human experience, of people and place; the way one affects the other and how the story and the experience of each go hand in hand. They seem to be influencing and imprinting on each other subconsciously and consciously. However these pieces become more about the deconstruction and reconstruction of the self via the symbolism of architecture.
During the global pandemic the artist was confined firstly in her home country of New Zealand but later she moved to her new home of Benin. The stark contrasts, different challenges of life, culture, language and world view could not have been in greater contrast. This has informed her work from a completely new perspective and her ability to travel during this time and see the experience of the pandemic from the view point of many different cultures has been a big inspiration to shift the point of view of her work from one of personal reflection to something with a more global perspective.

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