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From MIT List Visual Arts Center profile: "Jana Sterbak moved to Canada from Czechoslovakia in 1968 and currently resides in Montreal. Both sensational and cerebral, her work may be considered in the context of recent art that examines social and cultural conditions. Using the human body as sign and symptom of a pervasive malaise, the artist presents us with ordinary, physical objects – dresses, furniture and body parts – that attract us because they are familiar. Yet they are also repellent, because the artist has transformed and activated her sculptures in surprising ways, each work awakening specific emotions, some of them difficult to admit. Sterbak uses the physical properties of materials as analogues for psychological states, or, as she herself has observed, “the material becomes part of the idea.” One of Sterbak’s most important works is Vanitas: Flesh Dress for an Albino Anorectic, a dress of raw meat in which the artist comments upon both the objectification of women and the perishable nature of the human body."