Press

SELECTED CRITICAL TEXTS

Luca Panaro, The action of surprising, Critic text into LIUBA’s book This is the Best Artwork, Campanotto, 2023

“The artist does not shy away from telling her story: in fact, she turns it into a work of art. Never as in This is the Best Artwork has LIUBA exposed herself in the first person, showing her greatest love to her public. She does so with the language which has always been unique to her style, namely with her body, a body exposed to the audience and performing in places of art.

This time, the performance piece is staged at the opening of the Venice Biennale, the most sacred event for an artist. Hers is an unexpected action, an irruption that took everyone by surprise, not only the art insiders, but also those who have followed her research over the years, step by step, sharing moments of life. A media appearance that aroused amazement and incredulity thanks to the visually compelling images that LIUBA has cleverly disseminated on social media.

Not unlike her previous works, this performance carries a universal message, but This is the Best Artwork is much more intimate and private than her previous ones. This time the art experience is the birth of a child, as much desired as unexpected, a Sun, a sign of hope for everyone as well as the artist’s desire to share something personal with the public of art. (…)

full text: Luca Panaro, The action of surprising

From Giusy Petruzzelli, Con gli occhi fissi sul mare, Critical Text for LIUBA’s Solo Exhibition at the Pino Pascali Foundation Museum, Polignano a Mare (BA), 2019:

“Refugees welcome: two words perceived as an oxymoron, challenging and/or unsettling, place LIUBA’s artistic action in support of refugees within an ethical and socio-educational framework, at a time when art is often reduced to mere phenomenology of current events.

Since 2013, the artist has been undertaking actions on this theme in key Contemporary venues, such as the city of Berlin, involving refugees and navigating between taking a stance, fostering understanding, and expressing outrage. Through her performative actions, which result in video works, the artist denounces injustices; by becoming a living sculpture alongside refugees, she both elevates the act to a level of compassion and cries out the reality of every flesh-and-blood human being—a reality often rendered elusive by the fleeting words and images of the media, which last no more than a day.

LIUBA works so that justice in life may blossom from the utopia of art.”

full text: Giusy Petruzzelli, Con gli occhi fissi sul mare

Ambra Giombini, LIUBA una “nonne” dans l’art contemporain, in artjuice.net, 2018 (FRA)

“J’ai découvert LIUBA grâce à une vidéo où l’artiste, habillée en bonne sœur, prie selon les rituels des principales religions sur la place de Saint Pierre à Rome. Je passe souvent place Saint Pierre et je me demande : qu’est-ce qu’il peut y avoir de bizarre dans le fait de voir une nonne prier au Vatican ? Je décide alors d’approfondir ce sujet avec l’auteur de la vidéo, l’artiste LIUBA…”

full text: Ambra Giombini, LIUBA une “nonne” dans l’art contemporain

Ama Lorenz, The Art Project: refugees Welcome Germany Italy, in fairplanet.org, 2016 (ENG)

“When I was invited to present a performance art piece at the Kreuzberg Pavillon I realized that I was not interested in presenting a work of mine, nor in speaking about me. I wanted instead to give voice and space to the refugees and their problems. Also, because I was aware of that the media, at least in Italy, gave distorted information on the whole issue.”

full text: Ama Lorenz, 03.The Art Project- refugees Welcome Germany Italy

Damian Killeen, This is not a performance, in Tablet 2.0, 2015

“This may seem déjà-vu, but LIUBA is really still one of the few artist for whom any project or performance idea succeeds directly in expressing the essence of creative action which, through every possible form of engagement or direct or cross-involvement of the audience, invites reflection and, possibly, even action where the situation requires it. She does this with a consciousness, sensitivity and, especially, a social spirit, an inspiration the visual and performing arts, in general, cannot and must not be without.”

full text: Damian Killeen, This is not a performance

Ama Lorenz, YOU’RE OUT!, in fairplanet.org, 2014

“It is one of these old circle games that we played back in our childhood times: The Trip to Jerusalem. There is one less chair than the number of participants in this game. When music plays people are asked to dance and walk and when the music stops everyone has to find a chair to sit on. Everybody, except one person, will find a chair. And the odd person out will be excluded from the game.”

full text: Ama Lorenz, You Are Out

Mark Bartlett, LIUBA: Everyday Life, Institutional Critique, and Secular Faith, in “Flash Art Event”, 2013

“Her works, because they change from performance to performance remain open, indeterminant and surprising. But most importantly, because she so stringently adheres to self- denial and authorship, she is able to repeatedly translate, and iterate, what is untranslatable – if performativity is that which brings the event into existence through its enactment, then it is secularized faith in otherness that she stages over and over again, in concrete places like Rimini, Avignon, Brussels, Modena, and Frankfurt, in order to call to, to pray for, heightened attention to the everyday.”

full text: Mark Bartlett, Liuba: Everyday Life, Institutional Critique, and Secular Faith

Clara DeGalan, “Unhooked from Time” at Gallery Project, in The Detroiter, May 1, 2011

Unhooked from Time” has a bunch of fun films on display, all of which combine humor and profundity with varying results. The standout is The Slowly Project, by a Milan and New York based artist named Liuba. It follows the artist, dressed in a gauzy green frock, walking with exaggerated slowness through urban areas in Italy and New York. The soundtrack includes the reactions of people on the street who see her, and find her bemusing, charming, and irritating by turns. To me, Liuba is spellbinding. Her anachronistic, dreamy loveliness and graceful, slow motion movements speak not only on our world’s frantic pace but on what opens up when something occurs to break that pace, causing people to stop, look, and awaken to new possibilities.

full text; thedetroiter

Mark Bartlett, Saint LIUBA appears in the Piazza San Pietro, The Finger and The Moon Blog, 2009

“Lest it be thought that Liuba acted callously and merely to provoke violence with a naïve impunity, while risking a polymorphous and perhaps perverse blasphemy and a pointless martyrdom, it is crucial to understand that she studied with an Imam to pray as Muslim’s do; was advised by a Rabbi; studied Brahman and Zen rituals; and with an Inuit shaman. Finger and the Moon was performed with great care and accuracy, with sincere devotion and is a genuine and groundbreaking work of religious art, in the ecumenical, scholastic traditions of Thomas and al- Falsifa.”

full text: Mark Bartlett, Saint LIUBA

Irina Zucca Alessandrelli, Chelsea Sabotage, exhibition text for Chelsea Sabotage, Weiss Pollack Gallery, New York, 2006

“Liuba’s main interest in doing this provocative performance is the social aspect of the reactions, a sort of anthropological point of view. The audience’s reaction, in fact, provides a direct and immediate take on a country, a people, and its issues. At the SOFA, Liuba generated such an angry reaction that she was forced by the Show Management to leave the fair. The ironic aspect of this strong reaction is that security guards spent at least 20 minutes explaining to her what the red dots mean in the U.S. before they pushed her out, confiscating her cameraman’s ID and passport “because people pay for having a booth and people pay for visiting the fair,” as they kept repeating in the video.“

full text: Irina Zucca Alessandrelli, Chelsea Sabotage

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