Arrivals and Departures, 2025, performance, 20 min

Museo La Neomudéjar, Madrid, Spain

Performance responds to the history of Museo La Neomudéjar, Madrid, a former train station, by reflecting on life and passing of time. The performance channels the essence of life as a continuous journey, where each of us moves through moments, places, and relationships. Central to the piece is the motif of the clock’s movement, symbolizing the relentless passage of time. This rhythmic flow underscores how time governs existence, shaping our experiences and framing the potential for renewal. 

Performance was featured as part of IBERICA - International Performance Art Residency & Festival organized and curated by Hector Canonge for INPA, International Network of Performance Art. 

Walking the Line, 2025, performance, 180 min, IBERICA 2025

Karstica spacio de Creación, Cañada del Hoyo, Spain

In Walking the Line, I walked 11 kilometres along a disused railway from Cañada del Hoyo to Palancares, transforming the journey into a meditation on the loss of public transport and its deep regional effects. Walking a single rail demanded focus and balance, reflecting the fragile situation of communities cut off from transit. Each step symbolized the effort needed to maintain connections lost with the railway’s closure. 

The performance took place as part of IBERICA - International Performance Art Residency & Festival organized and curated by Hector Canonge for INPA, International Network of Performance Art. 

Your Sea, My Land, 2025, video performance, 8 min

La Réunion, France

The video performance was created on the French island of La Réunion, reflecting France's colonial history. Though the island was uninhabited when discovered, it became a site where enslaved Africans were exploited. The work explores themes of land appropriation and global division. Palm leaves symbolize exoticism tied to the colonial past. Sweeping palm fronds trace circles: maps of imperial division, clocks of elapsed time. Through this imagery, the performance reflects on history, identity, and the lasting impacts of colonization, while nowadays we can see new empires forming and the world being divided once again into zones of influence. 

Fleeting Realities, 2025, performance, 20 min

in dialogue with Maria Bartuszová public sculpture Metamorphosis, Košice, Slovakia

photo: Boris Vaitovič

"Soap bubbles, ephemeral and transient, function as spherical mirrors, reflecting the world that surround them... In Katarína Balúnová's performance soap bubbles become temporary objects that intra-act with Maria Bartuszová's monumental work Metamorphosis. As the bubbles draw closer to the sculpture, they reflect its forms, bringing a transient plasticity into the world of the sculpture and a fragility and impermanence which reveals the endless possibilities of transformation and the perpetual change undergone by all things... While Bartuszová's sculpture exists as a permanent object, the soap bubbles in Balúnová's performance are immediate, fleeting moments, reflecting the relativistic nature of time..."

(text Zuzana Križalkovičová, in Stillness in Motion, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht Verlage, pp. 216 - 217)

Silk NonRoad / Bombyx Mori Transformation, 2024, Pukanec, Slovakia

in 2025 presented in Centro de la Cultura Plurinaciona. (CCP) and Museo de la Ciudad Altillo Beni (MABI) as part of LATITUDES, Festival Internacional de Performance Art de Santa Cruz de la Sierra

The performance is part of the broader project Silk NonRoad, which blends art, history, and ecology to explore narratives of a specific locality in Slovakia. Set on an old black mulberry tree (Morus nigra), traditionally planted to feed silkworms (Bombyx mori), the work sees Balúnová embodying a metamorphosis into an imaginary silkworm butterfly, traversing the fluidity of time. This transformation becomes a metaphor for post‑colonial silk production and its entanglement with status, power, and refinement, reflecting on the complex relationships between nature, culture, and power. 

Projekt podporil z verejných zdrojov formou štipendia Fond na podporu umenia /

Supported using public funding by Slovak Arts Council in the form of a scholarship 

Nutmeg, 2024, performance in public space

Lisbon, Portugal 

In front of Belém Tower, a monument of that once guarded the departures of Portuguese caravels, the word “nutmeg” was slowly carved into the sand with a knife. The gesture was simple yet charged: a blade cutting into the shore from which ships once sailed toward distant territories in search of spices, wealth, and dominion. Nutmeg—small, fragrant, and once worth more than gold—became a symbol of the global spice trade that fueled European expansion. Writing it into the sand evoked both the violence and fragility embedded in that history. The knife suggested conquest and exploitation; the sand, the unstable foundations of empire. 

Dancing Imago Mundi, 2024

performance in public space, Valencia, Spain

The performance reflecting on genius loci and shifting perceptions of the world and our position within it. Drawing on the city’s mythic association with the Holy Grail and the cathedral’s stone rose window, the artist treats the window as a mandala and an imago mundi. Around a central chalice, Balúnová traces circular paths, using her body to generate geometric patterns that become a contemplative act, transforming the space into a living mandala. 

Projekt z verejných zdrojov podporil Fond na podporu umenia / Supported using public funding by Slovak Arts Council 

To Live of Love, to Die of Love, 2023, performance in public space, 2:53 min

Alencon, France

The performance was created during the artist residency at La Chapêlmèle in Alencon, France. Filmed in front of a Gothic cathedral, the work responds to St. Therese of Lisieux's poetry and the local architectural heritage. Through movement, Balunova creates ephemeral Gothic arches with her body that contrast with the cathedral's permanent stone structures, symbolizing the delicate balance between life and death. The recurring motif "vie - amour - mort" (life - love - death) from St. Therese's poetry underscores this meditation on love's necessity and women's historical position. This performance continues Balunova's exploration of place memory through physical-mental exercises in the front of a static camera.

Projekt z verejných zdrojov podporil Fond na podporu umenia / Supported using public funding by Slovak Arts Council 

Blindness, 2023, performance in public space

Lisbon, Portugal

The video performance was created during the artist’s art residency at Zaratan Arte Contemporânea in Lisbon. At the historic Cais das Colunas, the artist, blindfolded, uses a sea level measuring stick to highlight society’s blindness to the current ecological crisis. The work connects Portugal’s colonial history and its legacy of exploitation with today’s global issues of climate change and rising sea levels. Referencing José Saramago’s novel Blindness, Balunova points to the invisibility of social and ecological catastrophe, as well as our self-absorption in the digital age.

Projekt z verejných zdrojov podporil Fond na podporu umenia / Supported using public funding by Slovak Arts Council 

Thinking Building Dwelling, 2022, video performance

Al Khatim, United Arab Emirates

The video performance was made during the artist’s art residency in Art Hub Abu Dhabi. It is inspired by Martin Heidegger’s essay Building, Dwelling, Thinking. In the work, the artist explores different relationships between the body and the brick, treating the body as the primary subject and the brick as the fundamental object of building. Through subtle physical interactions with the masonry, she stages a quiet dialogue between inhabitant and material, question‑ing how the body dwells within the built environment and how acts of building shape the way we exist in space. 

Nutmeg, 2023, performance in public space, 30 min

Lisbon, Portugal 

The video performance took place on Lisbon’s mosaic world map, a public artwork evoking the Portuguese Golden Age of seafaring and its colonial legacy. By inventing an imaginary game—throwing and catching a nutmeg on the map—she created a playful interaction that simultaneously critiques historical power dynamics. The nutmeg, once a precious spice rivaling gold and silver in value, symbolizes the global spice trade that fueled exploration, exploitation, and conflict. Through this repetition of a simple, childlike act in a public space, the performance invites viewers to reconsider the lasting impact of colonial ambitions. 

Rebirth of the Myth, 2022, performance, 15 min, Balaton Art Residency

KOGART Foundation, Balatonszárszó, Hungary

“The performance Rebirth of the Myth, which took place in the context of the extremely low level of Lake Balaton due to an unusually dry and hot summer of 2022, highlights the ongoing effects of global warming and links them to Richard Brautigan's 1968 novel Watermelon Sugar. The novel describes a dystopian post-apocalyptic world in which a community lives in an idyllic setting and makes things out of watermelon sugar. The performance takes the novel's themes including nature, community and memories and connects them to contemporary ecological realities. It reflects on the interaction between literature, art and the environment and illustrates how art can be used as a means of drawing attention to contemporary ecological challenges.”  (text Zuzana Križalkovičová)            

Libellula, 2022, video performance, 1:16 min

Genoa, Italy

The video performance explores the fragile relationship between a (foreign) word and the (no longer) living animal it names. A delicate, empty dragonfly shell comes alive through the artist’s breath, blurring the boundary between life and artifact. The breathing‑induced motion turns the fragile exoskeleton into a transient presence, staging a dialogue between language, memory, and extinction. In this way, the work stages the word as both a carrier of meaning and a trace of what has vanished. 

Eat and Love, 2021, video performance, 7:55 min

Bratislava, Slovakia

The video performance plays with the sexual metaphor of the watermelon while engaging with the economy of fast‑food culture. The fruit becomes a charged signifier of fast sexual and romantic encounters—consumed quickly, without depth—set in contrast to the slower, embodied time of real love and real (bio)‑farming. From a contemporary art and philosophical perspective, the work stages a critique of instant gratification and commodified desire, repositioning the body, food, and intimacy as sites where value is either extracted or cultivated over time.

Counting Time by Hammer, 2022, video performance

Bratislava, Slovakia

Bratislava struggles to value architectural authenticity, often choosing demolition over preservation. Modernist buildings erected after mid‑century are now themselves being torn down, reflecting historian Carol Krinsky’s observation that modernist architecture is typically “photographed, described and demolished.” The House of Trade Unions, Technology and Culture – Istropolis – an emblem of socialist realism and brutalism built between 1956–81, replaced the historic Berchtold Palace (1832). Designed by Ferdinand Konček, Iľja Skoček and Ľubomír Titl, it featured remarkable interior spaces and artworks. Sold to a private investor, it entered a path toward liquidation, as developers prioritize profit over conservation and ecological renovation.

The video performance took place in front of Istropolis at the start of its demolition, when the Cuban stone‑marble cladding was being removed. Sixty‑six years after construction began, the artist draws 66 circles by hand, counterclockwise, as a gesture of temporal flow and return. The hammer, a symbol of socialist ideology, simultaneously stands for both building and destruction.

Salvator Mundi, 2021, performance in public space, 15 min 

Spisska Nova Ves, Slovakia

Salvator Mundi is a video performance that responds to the idea of utopia as salvation of the world. The globe‑like construction (mundus), a characteristic feature of socialist children’s playgrounds, serves as both stage and symbol. The action takes place on a typical Slovak post‑socialist housing estate, evoking a childhood “crucified” on socialist utopian ideals. Political education of children was a central pillar of the system, and although socialism fell in 1989, its consequences continue to shape social and psychic landscapes today.

Habsburger, 2020, performance in public space, 3:26 min

shut up and listen! Transdisciplinary Festival, Vienna, Austria

The performance reconfigures the relationship between monument and viewer within a postcolonial framework. Its title evokes the Habsburg monarchy while exposing the commodification of cultural heritage shaped by tourist behavior and the leisure industry. Habsburger by Katarína Balúnová unfolds at the statue of Empress Elisabeth (Sisi) in Vienna’s Volksgarten, where the artist intervenes by shifting her body weight onto burgers placed beneath the Empress’s shoe. This subtle yet charged gesture materializes submission to regimes of consumption, collapsing imperial memory into the logic of mass tourism. The work critically interrogates how marketing and spectacle sustain the myth of Sisi—privileging her beauty and youth over historical complexity—while revealing the monument as an active site where power, desire, and consumption intersect. 

Birth - Death, 2020, performance in public space, 15 min

St. Marx Cemetery, Vienna, Austria

Birth and death mark the opposing poles of life, and the female body becomes the threshold between them through meditative performativity. Artist uses the bodily and spatial tension to stage a quiet, ritual-like passage that inscribes the cycle of life into the architecture of memory and mourning.