Concept
Yana Milev is a German cultural theorist, sociologist, ethnographer, and curator. Yana Milev was born in Leipzig, East Germany, the first child of the Bulgarian physician and anthropologist Gancho Milev, who had immigrated to the GDR in the early 1960s, and the Leipzig-based translator and interpreter Karin Fahr-Mileva. Upon completing secondary school in what was then still the GDR she began a course of study in scenography and costume design at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts (HfBK) which she ultimately completed with a diploma conferred after German unification. Thereafter, she undertook postgraduate study as a master student of Günter Hornig. In the final years of the GDR, Milev was active in the country's subcultures. She became known for independent films, performances, and conceptual art. Beginning in 1992, she was visible on the international art market as an artist affiliated with the Galerie EIGEN+ART (Leipzig and Berlin). In 1995, she became the first GDR artist to receive the Max-Pechstein-Prize. Likewise as the first GDR woman artist to do so, Milev exhibited work at documenta X in 1997. With the support of a fellowship from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), Milev traveled to Japan, where she became conducted ethnographic studies and trained in the traditional Japanese martial arts Kyudō und Aikidō in Kyōto. In 1999, she earned the Sho-Dan of the Zen Nippon Kyudō Renmei (全日本弓道連) Tokyo. Upon her return from Japan, in 2003 Milev was released by her gallerist Gerd Harry Lybke. Her top career as an artist was ending promptly and she was forced to embark on a new life course. Milev completed under the advisorship of Peter Sloterdijk a doctoral studies in philosophy at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna and the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design (HfG). To finance her PhD studies study, in 2004 she became an instructor and project leader at the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK), initially at the Institute for Design Research and, in 2013, at the Institute of Cultural Studies in the Arts (ICS).