Jana Sterbak

Who is Jana Sterbak?

Jana Sterbak is a Canadian artist best known for her conceptual sculptures that are made about and in relation to the body. She is renowned for her dark and ironically feminist pieces such as I Want You to Feel the Way I Do…, Vanitas: Flesh Dress for an Albino Anorectic, Remote Control, and others.

Born in Prague, Czechoslovakia, Sterbak immigrated as a teenager with her psychiatrist parents to first Edmonton in 1968, then Vancouver in 1970, after the Prague Spring, where she attended Kitsilano High School and painted murals on school cafeteria. She attended the Vancouver School of Art in 1973-74 and the University of British Columbia in 1974-75 before moving to Montréal to complete her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1977 at Concordia University.

It is worth noting the intense Czech culture that Sterbak was surrounded by and continues to appreciate as strong buttressing references in her ironic and often pessimistic artwork. Coming from this background “it is not surprising, then, that the theme of constraint, imposed from within and from without, should have become a major preoccupation in her work”.