About
Sara Cowdell is a New Zealand performance artist and curator. She is the director and founder of Performance Art Week Aotearoa and previously the performance curator at Playstation Gallery. As a performance artist, Cowdell utilises multiple modalities including dance, costume design, video, collaboration, installation, and photography to explore society through a formalised and qualitative intimacy.
Drawing on her background in Anthropology, she engages in ethnography through interviews and conversations. These conversations form the conceptual core of her work, where the communion between interviewer/interviewee resonates across spatial, somatic relationships. Cowdell’s work strives for a raw viscerality and lingers on the uncomfortable textures of lived experience.
As a curator, Sara's work explores and expands on traditional art boundaries and instead focuses on experiential and participatory engagement with an overarching ethos based on experimental, site-specific and socially engaged practice. She has curated over 40 performance events, workshops, discussions and exhibitions. She works extensively to both present performance art and to develop performance art practises across New Zealand and abroad. Her events have taken place in numerous locations such as local galleries, a hilltop abandoned bunker, parliament grounds, a public park, a library and literally in the ocean.
FULL C.V
ongoing/current/upcoming
2017: Ongoing Artistic Director of Performance Art Week Aotearoa
2023: Curator/Producer for ‘Not as simple as it sounds’ by Ivan Lupi, to be presented at Midsumma Festival, hosted by Testing Grounds, Melbourne, Australia
performances/exhibitions/publications
2022: ‘Houses of Madness’ live performance presented as apart of Rosekill Performance Art Farm’s summer series, Kingston N.Y, U.S.A
2021: ‘Oceans of Madness’ live video performance presented as apart of PAN Asia 11th Festival, Tauranga, New Zealand/Online/South Korea
2021: ‘FVEY: Always together, never alone’ interactive online exhibition presented by Trocadero Gallery, Melbourne, Australia.
2021: ‘FVEY: Upstream Data Collection’ durational performance work presented as a part of Tiny Fest, Christchurch, New Zealand
2020: ‘Green Witches Stare’ video performance work presented as apart of Tempo Online Dance Festival, New Zealand
2020: ‘Losing Touch’ a collaborative live performance work presented as apart of Melbourne Fringe Festival, at the Abbotsford Convent, Melbourne, Australia
2020: ‘Caged Hearts’ a interactive online work commissioned for FUSE Festival, Melbourne, Australia
2020: ‘ONLY GOT 4 MINUTES TO SAVE THE WORLD’ video performance work, presented as a part of Performance Kokknet’s online covid video exhibition, Denmark.
2019: ‘0.35%’ live performance performed at Trocadero Gallery, Melbourne, Australia
2019: ‘A public reading of No friend but the mountains by Behrouz Boochani’, durational live performance on the Victorian Parliament Steps, Melbourne, Australia
2019: ‘How do we hold Shame’ live performance performed in two editions as apart of PAN Asia 10th Anniversary Festival, Seoul and Gwanju, South Korea
2019: ‘POWER’ a performance art theatre work presented at Basement Theatre in Auckland and Bats Theatre in Wellington, New Zealand.
2019: ‘Dew’ a photograph published in Mimicry Journal, Wellington, New Zealand
2018: ‘25’ exhibited as apart of ‘back in 5’ a 35mm photographic series as apart of a group show at Play_Station gallery, Wellington, New Zealand
2018: ‘Solar Nap Coal Rest’ photograph of Brydee Rood’s performance as apart of PAWA, Cover of Art News NZ Autumn Edition, New Zealand
2017: ‘ENOUGH’ live performance at Chandigarh Government Museum and Gallery, India
2017: ‘Call of a Sacred Woman’ performance art video, screened at ‘Karhake Festival of Protest’, New Zealand.
2017: ‘Crystalize’ photograph published in Murder Magazine, Iceland
2017:’Skin Shedding’ A live performance as a part of ‘Veins’, Titirangi, New Zealand.
2016: ‘Girls that Yell.’ A live performance as apart of ‘Of Body, Of Blood’ at Old Folks Association, Auckland and at Chronophonium Festival, Northland, New Zealand
2015: ‘Peripheral Visions’ performer as a part of the performance art project by Samin Son and Alexa Wilson, for the Month of Performance Art Berlin, Germany.
2014: ‘Facilitated Fun with Sara Cowdell’ A participatory performance as a part of Stadtumbau, By Studio Osk in Berlin, Germany.
2012: Member and performance artist in S.A.M.P.L.E performance art collective, Wellington, New Zealand
Curations
2021/2018/2017: ‘Performance Art Week Aotearoa’ Wellington, New Zealand
2020: ‘Epidermis’. By Ethan Morse, David Sebastian Lopez Restrepo, and Shubho O Shaha, Play_Station Gallery, Wellington, New Zealand
2020: ‘Ad hoc Re-Performance(NZ)’. by Anna Berndtson, Play_Station Gallery, Wellington, New Zealand
2019: ‘Unknown gifts. An evening of performance’ By Quinoa / Chris Kirk, Louie Neale, Band Sensations & Joanne Hobern’, Play_Station Gallery, Wellington, New Zealand
2019: ‘Tupi and not Tupi’ by Ève Chabanon, Play_Station Gallery, Wellington, New Zealand
2019: ‘Minter: Performances on Sound’ By Marcus Jackson, Antonia Barnett-McIntosh & Elliot Vaughan, Play_Station Gallery, Wellington, New Zealand
2019: ‘Suspending Time: Meditation.’ by Lou Drago, Sunday Night Club, Wellington, New Zealand
2019: ‘Performance Arcade 2019’ Curatorial Advisor, Wellington, New Zealand.
2016: ‘(you) hear me?’ Experiential art evening at Audio Foundation, Auckland, New Zealand
2016:’(you) feel me?’ Experiential art evening, Kingsland, Auckland, New Zealand
Talks/Residencies/Education
2022: Artist in residence at Mothership, New York, United States of America.
2022: Artist Talk at the Artist Salon, Mothership, New York, United States of America.
2021: Artist in residence as apart of ‘Making Space’ at Siteworks, Melbourne, Australia
2019: Artist Talk, as apart of the PAN Asia Performance Festival, Ilmin Museum, Seoul, South Korea
2017: Hosted a panel discussion ‘The emotional woman; the next feminist frontier’ at Chandigarh Government Museum and Gallery, India
2017: Artist in residence at Healing Hill Performance Art Residency, Morni Hills, India
2012: Post-Graduate Diploma in Fine Arts, Massey University, Wellington, New Zealand
2009-2012: Bachelor of Arts Majoring in Anthropology, Victoria University Wellington, New Zealand