Eva Weaver

Eva Weaver is orginally from Germany and is now based in Brighton. She has been working in performance since 2000. Funny, dark and highly visual, her performances concern issues of cross-cultural identity and belonging, historical trauma and stereotyping. Her work has been shaped by her cultural heritage, experience as an Art Therapist, reasearch into theBurlesque, Grotesque and Shamanic and by mentoring and training support from Helen Paris, Rose English, Silke Mansholt, Lois Weaver, Stacy Makishi, Guillermo Gomez Pena and others.

Eva holds an MA in Performance from Queen Mary University.Artist Statement



Artist Statement

Born in Germany, I have been living and working in the UK since 1995. I have been involved in performance for the past eight years, creating challenging yet funny and poetic performances, which touch on a broad register of emotions.


My work is concerned with issues of cross-cultural identity, belonging, historical trauma and stereotyping and the resulting performances, both time-based and durational, are highly visual, richly layered and visceral with an emphasis on the body as site. Sometimes created for a particular site, my performances include elements of physical action, bilingual text, myth and autobiographical narrative, song, video, as well as sculpting of objects and costumes from materials such as bread, paper, bones and wool.





My work has been influenced and inspired by varies sources: Bakhtin’s concept of the grotesque body in exploring possibilities of transgression; research into the Burlesque; experimentation with ‘hybridisation’ as utilised by Guillermo Gomez-Pena; traditional myths and archetypes and the question of how they can be translated into a contemporary artistic language, as well as, importantly, my own shamanic practice.





I am interested in the traces left at the end of the performance, which contain a tangible essence of what has happened here - this ‘aftermess’, often visually striking and disturbing, invites the audience to further reflect on the piece in the absence of the performer.

Skeleton Woman- a Public Performance Ritual 2002‘SKELETON WOMAN’ is a solo-performance and installation concerning death, transformation and healing through the careful and compassionate attending to bones. It evokes questions about how we deal with the wounds of our personal, national and collective trauma and histories and whether it is possible to recover, reconcile, heal and create dialogue in the face of those wounds.


The performance touches on mythical, spiritual, shamanic, psychological and historical layers and the theme of death is considered in terms of corporeality and mortality, the cyclical nature of life and death, wounds left by historical trauma and the possibility for transformation. Resonance can be found in the Jewish Holocaust and the mass murder of women as witches during the European witch-hunts, as well as more recent atrocities.


Performed over five days at Fields Gallery,


Brick lane, London


Includes live action, sound, singing and poetry.









The five days resonate with themes of the tale 'Skeleton Woman', an Inuit story :


Day 1: EXCAVATION and CLEANSING


The bones of national and personal trauma are dug up from the earth. These scattered bones are fragments, which hold testimony and memories. They are cleaned and laid bare. Excavated their stories are remembered and grieved.





Day 2: REMEMBERING and RECREATING


Through the process of casting and recreating of the bones by taking plaster casts from the ‘original’ fibreglass bones, the process of remembering is deepened, the bones are attended to and are being re-created.





Day 3: DISENTANGLING, ASSEMBLING and RECOVERING


The bones are recovered, symbolically and literally by wrapping them with layers of words, ripped from my own writing. The bones give testimony of their stories. The bones are assembled , remembered and interwoven.





Day 4: SINGING BACK FLESH ONTO THE BONES


‘Flesh is sung back onto the bones’, as in the story of ‘Skeleton Woman’. The bones are further covered with several layers of clothing ripped from the dresses I am wearing, continuing the process of recovering.





Day 5: TRANSFORMATION


Roses carry the hope for healing and dialogue beyond the bones. Many roses are woven around the bones and fill the body of ‘Skeleton Woman’. The performance ends by myself resting with Skeleton Woman.