How a Natural Born Singer Paints

Vladivojna La Chia


She rages on stage in the limelight, belting out her own lyrics in Czech, or in her own private language. The register of her rough voice is interesting. She is also a multimedia artist – she has created a video – and she is the guiding force of the Banana group.
On stage the art is presented mainly with her clothing – her trademark color is red. She also wears a white dress with a rococo wig and a golden bird mask, just like Mozart. With the wig off, she sings and dances with her hair pulled back into a bun—a ballet dancer skipping school. A guitar, the central element of the concert seen on a street post with reflectors and stretched with red strings, is in itself a work of art. Such performance work carries the pedagogic imprint of Petr Lysáček in whose studio Vladivojna studies in Ostrava. The action on stage transforms into montages of “Chess” and other cafe board games, choreographed as cruel board games, played and danced by Vladivojna herself.
The principle heroine of her paintings is a Girl who performs on the guitar in pubs. The spaces resemble the Černý pavouk pub in Ostrava as if it were still there, and if its bricks radiated with a hallucinogenic mixture of colors. For quieter people, these pictures, with their eclectic colors and jarringly juxtaposed shapes, can be difficult to take in.
She fares better with her drawing, which has a more limited register. Her drawings from the erotic fair in 2002 are decadently decorative and accurately depict the disgusting detritus of the place. A rapid sketch of the singer Bjork is delightful. A consistent motif in all of Vladivojna’s works is a self confident femininity that requires extravagant gestures and attacks with bare claws. She is a Rococo rocker with no real oponent.

01.01.2005