Sanja Ivekovic
dal 16/12/2008 al 31/1/2009
Segnalato da
16/12/2008
Sanja Ivekovic
Espaivisor - Galeria Visor , Valencia
Ivekovic employs photography, video, installation, and performance. She was recognized as a pioneer within video art in former Yugoslavia and was one of the first artists of her generation to focus on feminist questions. Throughout her career she has worked with mass media and she frequently contrasts the media image of woman with the private image.
In her art Sanja Ivekovic employs photography, video, installation, and performance.
She was recognized as a pioneer within video art in former Yugoslavia and was one of
the first artists of her generation to focus on feminist questions.
Throughout her career Sanja Ivekovic has worked with mass media and she frequently
contrasts the media image of woman with the private image as represented in her own
photo album. She aims by this means to reveal and illuminate how routines in our
daily lives are affected by fashion, advertising, and celebrity culture...
The earliest piece in this show is PAPER WOMEN (1976 - 77), a series which consists
of photographic illustrations from various women's magazines, which the artist has
in some way altered or damaged. In today`s domination of electronic media in which
impalpable images are rapidly and lavishly consumed as never before, the physical
attacking that Ivekovic employs in this series creates a disturbing sense of unease.
Faces of women fashion models are distorted, scratched, pierced, cut through...
In the video piece MAKE UP MAKE DOWN (1976 - 78), a sort of inversion in methodology
takes place, with the artist applying makeup onto herself, her face "cut out" of the
frame of the video image, showing only her plunging neckline and hands in the slowed
down, monotonous and repetitive, almost silent action that evokes private erotic
game. Once again, the viewer is left in the lurch, challenged to grasp his/her gaze
with his/her own (im)possible voice.
Regarded as a politically engaged artist from the beginning of her career, Ivekovic
has devoted herself and her private sphere to challenging views of privacy and the
human body in the public domain. As a feminist activist she has participated in many
major artistic and cultural projects and has stressed (in Women's House for
instance) the plight of women as victims of violence in their own homes.
In both GEN XX AND WOMEN'S HOUSE (SUNGLASSES) she uses advertisement illustrations
as the basis for quite a different type of narrative from the one we normally
associate with advertising. The aim of advertising is generally to be positive and
attractive, something that seldom holds our attention for long. Ivekovic refutes
totally the effect of such advertising by adding to pictures of famous models the
names of forgotten anti-fascist women and relating how they were imprisoned,
tortured, and usually executed (GEN XX). A clash thus arises between what the image
and the text relate. The same effect is created when she combines advertisements for
famous designer's labels of sunglasses with texts describing the violence to which
women have been subjected.
In the 90s,the war in former Yugoslavia influenced Sanja Ivekovic's art and in a
number of works she reflects on the everyday reality of it.
In the video GENERAL ALERT (SOAP OPERA), she reveals in an unexpected manner how the
war reached to the very heart of would be escapist TV. In the middle of a Latin
American soap opera, a strip of text would suddenly appear on the screen with the
words "General Alert-Zagreb" which means that the TV program was recorded during the
actual shelling of Zagreb.
In one of her more recent work FIGURE & GROUND from 2005 - 06 (where she continues
her practice of using mass media images) we are confronted by the war in a global
perspective. We see documentary pictures of masked men from different military
groupings paired with women fashion models which are promoting the clothing styles
inspired by war and terrorism.
Sanja Ivekovic
Sanja Ivekovic was born in 1949 in Zagreb, Croatia where she graduated The Academy
for Fine Arts.Her art production has spanned arange of media such as photography,
performance, video, installations and actions in the public domain since the 1970s.
She belong to the artistic generation which emerged after '68 and was raised in
Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia whose post-object art was usually
covered by the umbrella term New Art Practice.
Ivekovic's work is marked by the critical discourse with the politics of images and
body. The analysis of identity constructions in media as well as political
engagement, solidarity and activism belong to her artistic strategies.
In the Yugoslav/Croatian art scene she was the first woman artist to express a
clearly feminist attitude.
In 1973 she started to work with video. In the late eighties she was a founder and a
member of a number of women's non guvernment organizations in Croatia such as
Elektra- Women's Art Centre, The Centre for Women's Studies, B.a.B.e - the women's
human rights group .
Her work from the 1990s deals with the collapse of socialist regimes and the
consequences of the triumph of capitalism and the market economy over living
conditions, partucularly of women.
From 1999 - 2001 she was teaching «Contemporary Women's Art Practice» at The Center
for Women's Studies.
Her videos were selected for numerous international video festivals (Hague, San
Sebastian, Los Angeles, Berlin, Paris, Montreal and others) and she had solo
exhibitions and video presentations in the art institutions such as 49th October
Salon, Artist-Citizen, Belgrade;Cutting Realities, Gender strategies in Art,
Austrian Cultural Forum, New York; The Living Currency (La Monnaie Vivante),Tate
Modern,London (2008); Dokumenta 12, Kassel; 3rd Prague Biennial, Prag; Memorial to
the Iraq war, ICA, London; 10th International Istanbul Biennial, Istanbul; Gender
Battle, Santiago de Compostela; Stalking with Stories - The Pioneers of the
Immemorable, Apexart, New York; If I can't
dance, MuHKA, Antverp; Forms of Resistance - Artists and the Desire for Social
Change, Van Abbemuseum Eindhoven; WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution, MOCA, Los
Angeles; General Alert, Fundacio Antoni Tapies, Gothenburg Konsthall (2007);General
Alert, Kölnischer Kunstverein (2006); Public Cuts, Galerija P74, Ljubljana
(2006);Open Systems: Rethinking Art c.
1970;Tate Modern, London (2005); Die Regierung, Secession (2005); Women's House,
Palazzo Ferreri, Genoa (2004); documenta 11, Kassel (2002); Personal Cuts NGBK
(2002); Galerie im Taxispalais, Innsbruck (2001); After the Wall, Moderna Muset,
(1999/2001) and Manifesta 2,Luxembourg (1998).
She has been awarded the grants by the instiutions such as the Canada Council Grant
for the Visiting artists (1979, 1982, 1994) and the
Arts Link Grant (USA).
Opening 17 december at 8pm
Espaivisor - Galeria Visor
Corretgeria, 40, bajo izq-2, Valencia