Niko Raes

As much as Niko Raes is a live- artist and performer, he also works with mediums as photography, video, installation and sculptures. In all of these, he uses his own body and flesh as his material. “It’s the clay of the sculptor, the paint of the painter, the ink of a writer...”

Niko Raes studied photography at the Royal Collage of Arts in Antwerp, where he searched the borders of beauty in life and in art, inspired by greek myth. Missing reality and honesty in his work, he made the step to performing-arts, dropping the shell of mythology and searched for pure beauty and emotion in his physicly strong work, as he still does today.
His live performances can be seen as a combination of body-performance, physical dance and indurance theatre...All of his performances last just untill his body can take it. You might say he really walks the physical borders.
“I show an ‘ugly beauty’, a body in destress, ‘cause people need mutation to be remembered that they to have a body, fragile and carnal. Using my own body,flesh and blood, I try to bring beautyful images. And at the same time, questioning that same beauty...”

Some of Niko Reas performances are: Between Heaven and Earth, Puppetmaster, Shattered Dreams, Sweet Sorrow and  We’re all...

About Nico Raes' work...:
“I work in an honest and realistic way: naked and open. My work, as so my body, are a mirror that I put in front of the audience. Questioning them as their touch with reality. Some are shocked, others moved, but all have been touched one way or another...”
His work was seen in Antwerp, Brussels, Ghent, Oostend, Slovenia, France, Denmark and his work can be found in the Live Art Development Agency data base in London.

Source: BIT Teatergarasjen, from the programme of the performance, autumn 2004

BIT Teatergarasjen 16.11.2010: http://www.bit-teatergarasjen.no

• Niko Raes/Bodyrefuse - Artistic director