Anna Ádám is an interdisciplinary performance maker and visual artist whose work blurs the boundaries between image, object, and choreography with emphasis on the body as the central form of expression. She graduated at ENSAPC Art School in France in 2016, and also studied styling (2010) and mask/makeup (2018).
In the frame of her personal practice, combining photography, drawing, installation, clothing, fashion-performances, One-on-One performance, Seances, she conceptualizes and uses the exhibition space as a theatre, the catwalk as a stage, and the theater as an exhibition space. Her multidisciplinary and always site-specific projects echo the broader socio-political context from a feminist and queer perspective, and challenge the body as a political-affective geography, a historically shaped archive, a both public and private space, where power is constantly contested and negotiated. Anna Ádám also worked as a performance artist in commissioned works during her studies (Palais de Tokyo, Musée Georges Pompidou...), now she presents her projects in both exhibition spaces and theaters (Ludwig Museum, Museum of Modern Art Yerevan, National Museum of History Paris, Theater MU Budapest, Institut Français…), and holds seminars and workshops across Europe (Sweden, Hungary, Serbia, France, Armenia...).

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CURATING THEATER
​CHOREOGRAPHING EXHIBITION

Anna Ádám creates hybrid spaces where spectacle and exhibition merge: she "curates theater" and "choreographs exhibitions". She conceptualizes and uses the exhibition space as a theatre and the theater as an exhibition space: the plinth as stage, the installation as setting, the visitor as spectator, and vice versa.
​In her solo exhibitions, curated in theaters, her drawings, photographs and installations act as prop or scenery settings, performances avoid linearity and narrativity. On the other hand, in exhibition spaces, she regularly creates One-on-One performances and Seances, in which she works with characters, develops scenography and dramaturgy, uses special effects, and creates particular light conditions together with complex soundtracks.

VISUAL ARTS

Stone, soil, leaves, and flowers: Anna Ádám’s recurring theme is the garden with its historical, philosophical, psychological, allegorical, erotical, and sexual meanings. Both organic and dreamy, true and imaginary, a place heavy with symbols yet devastatingly familiar. In Anna Ádám's drawings, photographs, and installations, gardens are structured microcosms, conceptual organizations of the inside and the outside, mirrors of the body and the soul, atemporal places of desire and temptation, interdicts, transgressions, and taboos.

PERFORMING ARTS

Anna Ádám creates performances (fashion-performances, Seances) and choreographed works with a strong political, ecological and social dimension. 
Some of Anna Ádám's performances are One-on-One, and invite only one audience member at the time to experience the piece. These in-situ projects challenge the traditional performer/spectator or artwork/viewer relationship, allow the spectators to immerse themselves in the performance and gain a more intensive and personal experience, based on closeness, intimacy, and connectivity. ​

costume design & MAKEUP

Before graduating in Arts, Anna Ádám studied styling, dressmaking, and she also followed makeup classes. As of 2015, she works as a costume designer, and as of 2017 she also acts as a make-up artist for contemporary dance and theater projects. Through questioning the original functions of clothes and accessories, Anna Ádám challenges the established codes of the fashionable body and standards of beauty. Her surprising combinations of materials, objects, colors, and forms transgress normative discourses, gender boundaries, and traditional systems of representation.

education

Anna Ádám also creates and holds workshops and trainings both for professionals, amateurs, kids and adults. Her methodology, "art-based unlearning", and more broadly, art education conceived as a critical practice, is a cross-disciplinary approach using artistic skills, processes and experiences as tools to take an active part in the social and political discourse on women's empowerment and rights, and to enhance their emancipation by the means of education and art. The goal of “art-based unlearning” is to create immersive learning experiences via readings, discussions, creative exercises in various artistic forms (visual arts, performing arts, creative writing...), so as to make women gain new insights and perspectives, develop critical thinking and confidence. During the classes, participants have the opportunity to experiment in a safe, judgement-free zone where they can express themselves most honestly while receiving the support, knowledge and tools to grow confidence and strengthen their personal performance persona.

Gray box

Anna Ádám works for the Paris-based company Gray Box as a choreographer since 2018. She is also responsible for the educational programs and research.

School of disobedience

Anna Ádám created the School of Disobedience in 2014. This ​is a nomadic, experimental and non-formal performance art school and fight club at the same time, based on questioning, criticizing, protesting, resisting and defying. Composed of thematic classes, the program introduces the concepts of oppression, domination, exploitation, marginalization, powerlessness and violence from a critical feminist perspective. The school is free of charge and open for all women, independent of age, nationality, professional or educational background.