
Slovenian born visual artist and filmmaker Nataša Prosenc Stearns graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Ljubljana, where she started experimenting with moving images. She traveled to Los Angeles on a Fulbright Grant for her MFA at California Institute of the Arts. She is a recipient of the Soros and Durffee Grants among others. Her work has been featured in numerous group exhibitions in such institutions as the Douloun Museum of Art in Shanghai, Circulo de bellas artes and ARCO Fair in Madrid, Kunstlerwerkstatt in Munich, Bevilacqua la masa in Venice, Spazio Erasmus Brera in Milan, Museum of Modern Art in Ljubljana, Tel Aviv Museum of Art in Israel, LACE - Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, Ruth Bachofner Gallery and MOAH - Lancaster Museum of Art and History in Los Angeles and The European Capital of Culture Commission. She exhibited twice at the Venice Biennale. First she represented Slovenia at the 48th Biennale with her project Gladiators, for which she received Prešern Fund Award, a national award for great achievement in art, and in 2015 she was part of the Biennale’s group exhibition 20 Artists from Los Angeles, presented by bardoLA. She lives and works between Venice, CA and Ljubljana, Slovenia. Her video and installation works reflect the world through a prism of imaginative, sometimes surreal or utopian prospect of non-anthropocentric future, where everything is connected and coexists with equal significance. The process of layering integrates different visual elements and leads to fragments of narrations. Recorded footage undergoes elaborate editing process, which enables her to deconstruct and reconfigure the relationships between layers, to create a new reciprocity among them. In the process of production she crafts all aspects of her projects: concept, recording, editing, sound and often performing - using her own body as a subject of transformation. Sourcing from personal experiences, her practice encompasses the impact of technological and social changes on people, with specific interest in changing gender landscape. It reflects the world of consumerism, continuous political crisis and addiction to technology. Finding a ground of connection that unites people with the organic world, she is testing the limitations of human, mainly female, body and hinting at its potential limitlessness. The anatomy of the images is in flux, in perpetual mutation, transformative states, questioning the integrity of the body, integrity of the self, the impermanence and transitory nature of human condition, of all conditions.
Production: Center RTV Maribor, TV Slovenija, 1997
The video focuses on the concept of skin, which is the borderline between the body and its surroundings. The picture consciously rejects all sophisticated visual manipulation and instead uses basic visual effects: the play of light and shadow, and colour...
Production: TV Slovenija, 1995
A woman's shoe gets stuck in concrete in the middle of the city. Her usual rhythm of life is disturbed. She is impatient to solve the problem. But a string of unexpected events interferes with her plans. Her world of fast living, obligations and errands t...
Production: TV Slovenija, 1995
A man and a woman aim to fulfil their desire for power, beauty, supremacy and other similar human attributes. The male and the female are represented through archetypal images: a strong man's body fighting against the crude force of nature, and a woman's...
Production: TV Slovenija, 1995
The idea of time connects with the image inherent in video, the encrustation of the picture, which allows for the free exchange of images from different worlds and periods. The double silhouette of a person delineates two time segments: the passing of dai...
Production: TV Slovenija, 1995
This video in black-and-white presents people participating in mass rituals, primarily wars and the glorification of leaders, which are constant and universal documents of the world. The global and temporal association of these images is emphasised by the...
Production: TV Slovenija, 1994
The video film replicates the labyrinth presented in the installation of the same title. Bricks are placed on the floor, and they pass into the labyrinth on the screen. The figures never come from 'behind the walls' of the labyrinth, we can only hear the...
Production: Mladinski program TV Slovenija, 1992
The eternal issue of the relation between the sexes is presented by pairs and accentuated by the details which are doubled. In the foreground we see fish ('real' fish, or a graphic sign), and from time to time they completely fill the screen. The video im...
Production: Eurospekter (koprodukcija) & Otroški in mladinski program TV Slovenija, 1991
This video can be viewed as a video fairy-tale: it contains all the elements of one. The happening takes place in a forest. We see a dwarf that never shows its face, but on its travels it often encounters other incredible beings. Graphic signs are compone...
Production: TV Slovenija, 1990
The repeated use of a media image gives it the status of stereotype - in this case a clock announcing the beginning of the television news. The artist wishes to undermine the 'freezing' of the stereotypical media image; she transforms it and thus reinstat...
Production: TV Sarajevo, 1989
The dance-floor and dancer are symbols of two worlds and generations placed in opposition. The division is defined by music and chromatic contrasts. The dancer first dances a waltz, but this later changes to rock'n'roll. The video is enhanced by drawings,...