Katya Petetskaya

Katya Petetskaya
biography
I am an interdisciplinary artist working across performance and visual art based in the Blue Mountains, Australia. Growing up in the former Soviet Union during the turbulent 1990s shaped my critical approach to narratives about the status quo. My work explores alternative forms of knowledge and modes of existence. Through performance and visual art, I examine expanded ways of perceiving and engaging with the world and the environment. My approach to performance art is strongly influenced by my visual arts background and my research in more-than-human choreographies. I work with objects as collaborators and my body as both medium and tool, generating 'living images' that transform the known into the unknown. Everyday objects, often overlooked, become active participants, revealing their own performative agency. This expanded practice seeks to explore ecological entanglements and non-human intelligence. I am currently undertaking a PhD in performance art and interdisciplinary practice at Macquarie University, Sydney, where my research focuses on more-than-human choreographies and extended mind theory. I investigate how human and non-human entities co-create within performative environments, expanding notions of agency and collaboration. My current artistic research includes developing performances in collaboration with weaver ants, working alongside Macquarie University researchers studying natural complex systems. These investigations have deepened my inquiry into interspecies co-creation and ecological intelligence in performance-making.
portfolio

'Forms of Flight'
‘Forms of Flight’ presents a series of paintings by Katya Petetskaya on aluminium and canvas, shaped by the artist’s performance practice, where gesture and material act as co-creators.