Manuel Pelmuş

Manuel Pelmuş was born in Bucharest, Romania. He is a choreographer and artist who lives and works in Oslo and Bucharest. Pelmuş could be seen as one of the protagonists of the “new performance turn,” artists who have been reimagining the role of performance in the context of visual arts. He often deploys continuous live presence within the context of exhibitions, using enactment as a strategy and the human body as a medium and a means to explore the body’s relationship to memory and the construction of history. In addition to his recent solo exhibition at Para Site, Hong Kong (2018), Pelmuş’s projects have been featured at institutions including the Tate Modern, London; the Museum Ludwig, Cologne; Centre National de la Danse, Paris; TanzQuartier, Vienna; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven; Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw, Tanz im August, Berlin; and the Museum der Moderne, Salzburg, among others. In 2013, he represented Romania at the 55th Venice Biennale with a collaborative project with Alexandra Pirici. He has additionally participated in the Off-Biennale, Budapest (2017), and the Kyiv Biennale (2015).

In 2012, Pelmuş was awarded the Berlin Art Prize for performance arts and later recognized with the prize for excellence from the National Dance Center of Bucharest in 2015. Beginning with October 2019, Manuel Pelmuş will be research fellow at the Academy of Fine Arts Oslo (KHIO).