Anya Liftig

Work for Live Art Danmark
2013 “Bad Salad” at Hitparaden 1

Bad Salad
There’s a long line of performances that deal with human-animal relationships and cross-collaboration in Anya’s work . For her 10 minute performance in the courtyard of the venue of both Hitparaden, Pumpehuset in the center of Copenhagen, she expanded the scope of her often intimate relations with non-human organisms to the ingredients of a salad. Emitting sounds of fear and pain she shredded a head of iceberg lettuce, a bunch of carrots and various other vegetables using no tools, but her hands, teeth and other parts of her body. Her ferocious action transformed the usually harmless and even joyful everyday action of preparing a salad (click here for another salad related performance) into a small scale horror movie, making the viewer reflect on all the organisms that have to perish for us to thrive, and spoiling their appetite for greens for a short while.

About the Artist
Anya uses humor to address failure and the difficulty of connecting with other human beings. Her performances often place both the artist and the viewer in an odd juxtaposition of parody and embarrassment. Laughing at her pratfalls, the viewer is drawn into a distopic blend of Chaplinesque physical humor and feminist action art.

Photo: Peter Lind

Anya is a graduate of Yale University and Georgia State University. Her work has been featured at TATE Modern, Exit Art, MOMA, Center for Performance Research, Chez Bushwick, ]performance space[ London, Yale University, Highways Perfomance Space, Lapsody4 in Finland, Fado in Toronto, The Performance Art Institute in San Francisco, Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, Grace Exhibition Space, Surreal Estate, IV Soliders, Panoply Performance Laboratory and many other venues.

In “The Anxiety of Influence” she dressed exactly like Marina Abramovic and sat across from her all day during “The Artist is Present” exhibition.

Find more examples of Anya’s work on her website.