Sriwhana Spong (born 1979) is an artist and dancer from New Zealand. Spong grew up in Auckland, New Zealand, in a family of

Balinese Balinese may refer to: *Bali, an Indonesian island *Balinese art *Balinese dance *Balinese people *Balinese language *Nusa Penida Balinese * Bali Aga Balinese **Balinese script **Balinese (Unicode block) *Balinese mythology *Balinese cat, a cat bre ...

origin. She studied at

Elam School of Fine Arts The Elam School of Fine Arts, founded by John Edward Elam, is part of the University of Auckland Faculty of Creative Arts and Industries, Faculty of Creative Arts and Industries at the University of Auckland. It offered the first Bachelor of ...

, graduating with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 2001. Her first exhibitions were in not-for-profit spaces in New Zealand, Australia and Germany. In 2003 she had her first solo show, at the Anna Miles Gallery. Spong also holds a master's degree from

Piet Zwart Institute The Piet Zwart Institute is a post-graduate institute for study and research in art, media and design based in Rotterdam, Netherlands. Named in memory of the Dutch designer Piet Zwart, it was inaugurated in 2001. The current postgraduate study ...

Rotterdam Rotterdam ( , ; ; ) is the second-largest List of cities in the Netherlands by province, city in the Netherlands after the national capital of Amsterdam. It is in the Provinces of the Netherlands, province of South Holland, part of the North S ...

, the Netherlands. Much of her work is in film and video, and reflects her training in classical ballet by focusing on dance and movement. In 2010 she presented a multi-dimensional film at

Art Basel Art Basel is a for-profit, privately owned and managed, international art fair staged annually in Basel (Switzerland), Miami Beach (US), Hong Kong and Paris. Art Basel provides a platform for galleries to show and sell their work to buyers, an ...

, a re-imagining of a lost ballet,

George Balanchine George Balanchine (; Various sources: * * * * born Georgiy Melitonovich Balanchivadze;, Romanization of Georgian, : April 30, 1983) was a Georgian-American ballet choreographer, recognized as one of the most influential choreographers ...

’s ''The Song of the Nightingale''. The ballet was originally choreographed in 1925 however all that remains are fragments of a film of it, the score, and photographs of the costumes. Spong also published a companion book to her film. Spong obtained her doctorate from the

University of Auckland The University of Auckland (; Māori: ''Waipapa Taumata Rau'') is a public research university based in Auckland, New Zealand. The institution was established in 1883 as a constituent college of the University of New Zealand. Initially loc ...

. The title of her 2021 doctoral thesis was ''Scirinz (a running sore): particular and ecstatic scripts of the body by mystic women in the Middle Ages and early modern Europe''.

Women mystics

Spong's practice has been partly influenced by the works of medieval women mystics, which she first encountered while at Piet Zwart Institute in 2014. In an interview with Ocula in 2018, Spong mentioned the Brazilian writer

Clarice Lispector Clarice Lispector (, born Chaya Pinkhasivna Lispector (; ) December 10, 1920December 9, 1977) was a Ukrainian-born Brazilian novelist and short story writer. Her distinctive and innovative works delve into diverse narrative forms, weaving them ...

, the Christian mystics

Margery Kempe Margery Kempe ( – after 1438) was an English Catholic mystic, known for writing through dictation '' The Book of Margery Kempe'', a work considered by some to be the first autobiography in the English language. Her book chronicles her domes ...

and

Hildegard von Bingen Hildegard of Bingen OSB (, ; ; 17 September 1179), also known as the Sibyl of the Rhine, was a German Benedictine abbess and polymath active as a writer, composer, philosopher, mystic, visionary, and as a medical writer and practitioner ...

, among others, as her inspirations. For Spong, who considers "art history' as largely the history of male looking—and predominantly white male looking", women mystics' writings led her to examine "the idea of breaking and entering the practice of a much-lauded male modernist painter and stealing a work, only to remake it into something of my own".

Recognition

In 2005 Spong's work ''Nightfall'' won the Contemporary Art Award at

Waikato Museum Waikato Museum () is a regional museum located in Hamilton, New Zealand. The museum manages ArtsPost, a shop and gallery space for New Zealand art and design. Both are managed by the Hamilton City Council. Outside the museum is ''The Tongue of ...

. In 2012 her work ''Fanta Silver and Song'' was shortlisted for the

Walters Prize The Walters Prize is New Zealand's largest contemporary art prize. Held biennially since 2002, the prize aims to 'make contemporary art a more widely recognised and debated feature of cultural life'. The prize is named in honour of New Zealand ab ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Spong, Sriwhana Living people 1979 births Entertainers from Auckland Artists from Auckland Elam Art School alumni 21st-century New Zealand artists University of Auckland alumni