Sriwhana_Spong
Sriwhana Spong
New Zealand artist and dancer
Sriwhana Spong (born 1979) is an artist and dancer from New Zealand.[1][2]
Spong grew up in Auckland, New Zealand, in a family of Balinese origin. She studied at Elam School of Fine Arts, graduating with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 2001.[2] 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.[2]
Spong also holds a master's degree from Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam, the Netherlands.[3] Much of her work is in film and video, and reflects her training in classical ballet by focusing on dance and movement.[4] In 2010 she presented a multi-dimensional film at Art Basel, a re-imagining of a lost ballet, George Balanchine’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.[5] Spong obtained her doctorate from the University of Auckland. 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.[6]