Anna Ádám is a multidisciplinary artist, choreographer, writer and educator working across performance, critical theory and experimental pedagogy. Born in Hungary, she studied at ESSEC Business School and later at the École Nationale Supérieure d’Arts de Paris-Cergy in France.
Her work is concerned with differentiation, conflict and autonomy: how a person, an artwork or an artistic practice separates from what has shaped it and begins to construct its own conditions of existence. She approaches conflict not as something to eliminate, but as a space where choices become visible and transformation becomes possible.
Her performance works—including CLASH, Secret Garden, sorry not sorry…, Right for Fight and UTOPIA/DYSTOPIA—explore power, dependency, internalized authority, resistance and individuation through choreography, text, objects and participatory situations.
Alongside performance, Ádám writes critical theory texts on artistic labour, education, autonomy, institutional dependency and the conditions in which art is produced. These texts circulate through publications and are also performed as lectures and lecture-performances at conferences, festivals and artistic gatherings.
Over time, the same questions expanded beyond individual artworks into the structures surrounding artistic practice. Ádám initiated School of Disobedience, a long-term artistic and pedagogical project dedicated to unlearning artistic conditioning and developing more autonomous practices. She also founded and curates Performance Now! Festival, creating conditions for experimental performance to circulate, encounter audiences and enter into dialogue with other practices.
Through individual artistic mentorship, she accompanies artists in developing works and practices over time—helping them clarify artistic questions, make choices, identify recurring methods, structure processes and recognise what already belongs to their own artistic language.
These activities are not separate branches of her work. They are different forms of the same research: How can artists create, learn, produce and circulate without reproducing the structures they are trying to question?
Much of this research currently unfolds through Anna Ádám Studio in Budapest, a workspace for creation, study, rehearsal, writing and public presentation. Across performance, writing, teaching and artistic accompaniment, her practice returns to the same proposition:
Emancipation is not an idea. It is something we rehearse every day.
Her work is concerned with differentiation, conflict and autonomy: how a person, an artwork or an artistic practice separates from what has shaped it and begins to construct its own conditions of existence. She approaches conflict not as something to eliminate, but as a space where choices become visible and transformation becomes possible.
Her performance works—including CLASH, Secret Garden, sorry not sorry…, Right for Fight and UTOPIA/DYSTOPIA—explore power, dependency, internalized authority, resistance and individuation through choreography, text, objects and participatory situations.
Alongside performance, Ádám writes critical theory texts on artistic labour, education, autonomy, institutional dependency and the conditions in which art is produced. These texts circulate through publications and are also performed as lectures and lecture-performances at conferences, festivals and artistic gatherings.
Over time, the same questions expanded beyond individual artworks into the structures surrounding artistic practice. Ádám initiated School of Disobedience, a long-term artistic and pedagogical project dedicated to unlearning artistic conditioning and developing more autonomous practices. She also founded and curates Performance Now! Festival, creating conditions for experimental performance to circulate, encounter audiences and enter into dialogue with other practices.
Through individual artistic mentorship, she accompanies artists in developing works and practices over time—helping them clarify artistic questions, make choices, identify recurring methods, structure processes and recognise what already belongs to their own artistic language.
These activities are not separate branches of her work. They are different forms of the same research: How can artists create, learn, produce and circulate without reproducing the structures they are trying to question?
Much of this research currently unfolds through Anna Ádám Studio in Budapest, a workspace for creation, study, rehearsal, writing and public presentation. Across performance, writing, teaching and artistic accompaniment, her practice returns to the same proposition:
Emancipation is not an idea. It is something we rehearse every day.