KONFERENZ ÜBER DIE KUNST UND KULTUR
VON DEN EX-YU KÜNSTLER*INNEN, KURATOR*INNEN
UND KULTUR ARBEITER*INNEN IN ÖSTERREICH
TEXTILES
PERFORMANCE
PAPER
DIGITAL
VIDEO
CURATORIAL
26. – 27. APRIL 2022
ACADEMY OF FINE ARTS VIENNA
Post-Conceptual Art Practices Studio
Atelierhaus, Lehárgasse 8, 1060 Wien, 1OG Atelier Süd (M1)
AIDA JAKUBOVIĆ
Aida Jakubović is an artist and teacher with Bosnian roots based in Lower Austria. She is currently a master student at the Institute of Arts and Education at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. As the daughter of immigrants, she focuses on topics like intersectionality, identity politics, empowerment, and culture in her artistic practice. In most of her works, she depicts everyday life scenes through figurative painting and drawing, exploring and sharing (auto-)biographical narratives.
www.aida-jakubovic.at
ANDJA ŽIVADINOVIĆ-MIKIĆ
Andja Živadinović-Mikić, fine artist, illustrator, and expressive art therapy practitioner from Ćuprija, Serbia, currently based in Vienna.
In her artwork, she is exploring the power of the collective feminine.
She is leading workshops based on Expressive art therapy methods for children, youth, and adults.
BOJANA NOVIČIĆ
Born in Lazarevac in 1983 god. Graduated from the Faculty of Applied Arts in Belgrad in 2008. Until 2011 lived and worked in Belgrade as a restorer and associate at the National Museum, Belgrad. In my artistic work, I am interested in the female body, which I regard as an object that changes through transposition and acquires a different meaning and use. Since 2011 I’ve been living and working in Vienna.
ĐENANA HADŽIĆ
Đenana Hadžić was born in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1982 and grew up in a Yugoslavian family in Mostar and Dubrovnik. As an artist, she searches for forms that can give artistic expression to her life experiences (dissolution of state order, civil war, emigration, etc.). Being a stranger inevitably raises the question of identity for them. In her artistic work, she tries to follow the hybrid construction of her own identity in order to finally redefine and understand herself again and again. She is always faced with the question of which translations she can develop. The breaks in her biography are reflected in her approach and her work. She is currently studying at the Academy of Fine Arts, at the Institute for Art Education.
´Ways of belonging`
This photo is a part of an ongoing research project.
As a transnational person I am challenged and curious about what home is and where we draft our sense of belonging.
The starting point of this project was the research of `rišilje` a handmade lace that requires exceptional skill and patience. Curious about the origin, I came to understand that is an often-used fabric in the traditional cloth throughout all of ex-Yugoslavia.
Also, my family run up til the early 1990s a boutique, where parts as whole pieces of clothing had elements of `rišilje`. Growing up it was all around me.
The answers I found, where the fabric originated were rather unsatisfying.
It is more the question of my personal history of belonging to this specific fabric that interests me.
The photo was taken in Mostar, at Partizansko Groblje, a brutalist monument built-in 1965 for the fallen Partizans during WW II, by the sculptor and architect Bogdan Bogdanovic. Elements found in the symbolism of the monument you can see are also mirrored in the lace. Concept and dress: Đenana Hadžić
Photo: Tajana Čumurija
ISIDORA KRSTIĆ
Isidora Krstic is a multimedia artist born in 1987 in Belgrade, former Yugoslavia, who spent the formative years of her life in Johannesburg, South Africa, and is based in Vienna since 2012. She studied Painting at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Belgrade and received her Master’s degree in Art&Science from the University of Applied Arts in Vienna, and briefly studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. She is co-founder of artist-run U10 Art Space in Belgrade (founded in 2012) focused on emerging artists from the region. She has worked on numerous curatorial, editorial, and teaching projects in the arts and has worked within several artistic collectives.
Her artistic practice leans towards creating spaces of reflection broadly regarding topics such as mythology, dreams, travel, identity, and memory, and ultimately highlights the dissonance between what is perceived vs. what is felt. Her socio-political background as well as events occurring during her childhood/teenage years play a large role in her work, which is often utilized to process and understand these experiences. She works with installation, painting, video, sculpture, drawing, collage, and sound, often creating an immersive, multi-media setting.
ARCADIA
2019
Video installation, 11’17”
Sound design: Isidora Krstić, instrumental piece by Pieter Gabriel
The work Arcadia deals with the dissonance between the subjective lived experience in a place versus the expectations.
Spending some time in Sète, in the south of France, in the scope of an artist in residence program led to investigating the theme of idyllic landscapes, but also to pose the following questions – What makes a landscape worth admiring? And to whom do the surroundings and the experienced supposed beauty of a place belong to?
In search of the answers, I embark to find typically idyllic places. I find them in parks, in dramatic views of the sea, and in the botanical garden in Montpellier. The process itself would aid my feeling at home in the place where I had found myself in.
The sound and editing of the video are meant to depict the dissonance between the subjective feelings and the wished experience, which results in the impossibility of feeling present in the given moment. Presence as a topic has nowadays gotten a new meaning as we realize that we cannot so easily be present in the places we want to – both in a physical sense as well as emotional.
www.isidorakrstic.com
IVANA KRALJ
Ivana Kralj (1984) born in Rijeka. A visual artist who studied sculpture at University for applied arts in Vienna (Gerda Fassel and Erwin Wurm). Her work expands from drawing, sculpture, installation, and performance. Ivana lives and works in Vienna since 2004.
www.ivanakralj.com
JASMINA TUMBAS
(Ph.D., Art History, Duke University) is an Assistant Professor of Contemporary Art History & Performance Studies and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Global Gender and Sexuality Studies at the University at Buffalo. Her first book, “I Am Jugoslovenka!” Feminist Performance Politics During & After Yugoslav Socialism has recently been published by Manchester University Press’s Rethinking Art’s Histories series (February 2022). Tumbas is also working on a second manuscript, Feminists of the Yugoslav Diaspora: Art and Resistance Beyond Citizenship and Nationhood. She served as the guest editor for the special issue of ArtLeaks Gazette #5: Patriarchy Over and Out: Discourse Made Manifest and her research has appeared in ArtMargins, Camera Obscura: Feminism, Culture, and Media Studies, Art Monthly, Art in America, ASAP Journal, Art and Documentation, and in the anthologies Shifting Corporealities in Contemporary Performance (edited by Marina Gržinić and Aneta Stojnić) and Performance Art in the Second Public Sphere (edited by Katalin Cseh-Varga and Adam Czirak).
JELENA JOKIĆ-BORNSTEIN
(*1985 in BiH, living in Vienna since 2004) is an architect and social researcher. She holds an MA in International Development from the University of Vienna and an MA in Architecture from the Technical University of Vienna. Her research interests intersect gender, conflict, (e)migration, development, and art.
“YU.Go Girl: BiH female artists in Vienna and their role in the (re)construction of collective memory and identity” is a research project started in 2019 as a master’s thesis at the Institute for International Development, University of Vienna. In light of the ongoing battles over collective identity and memory, as well as the mass emigration of youth from post-war BiH, the study analyzes the biographies of BiH female migrant artists based in Vienna (as one of the largest BiH diasporic communities worldwide) and examines the extent to which they participate in the national discourse through their work, social networks, and institutional cooperation.
MARIJA ŠABANOVIĆ
I was born in Niš, Serbia, where I completed my architecture degree. While still in high school, I was involved in anti-war activism, and during my studies, I joined a local initiative dealing with the rights and visibility of the LGBTIQ people in southern Serbia. I have been living in Vienna since 2012 and currently work as a youth worker with girls* and young women*.
“My photography work is focused on bodies, identities, and people’s narratives. It is strongly influenced by intersectional feminist thought and many years of queer activism. My tool is mostly a digital camera, and portraiture is the medium through which I approach my subjects. The motivation to take a portrait – whether of myself or other people – stems, not only from my fascination with bodies but includes everything that surrounds and interacts with them: colors, light, objects; for that reason, I often use 35 mm lens. Portraiture is my way of confronting social norms and their effects on our mental and physical wellbeing – it´s a method that allows for the expression of struggle, as much as pride and rebellion. For me, the act of taking a portrait is a process of connecting empathetically to the person I photograph. This connection is the basis for what is encaptured in the portrait.”
Bathroom: Silence, 2016
“The bathroom is the only room in our living space meant for being with our bodies and taking care of them. It is the only room where we have to be naked facing our bodies the way they are: skinny, old, queer, ill, fat, black, female, trans, hairy, unable. Even if we avoid looking at them, we still have to touch them. Our bodies are giving us feelings such as satisfaction, fear, happiness, or shame, which is affecting all aspects of our everyday lives. Bathrooms can be the only places where we can be alone, where we can hide, cry, think, or just have a rest.The bathroom is the place where I am connecting with myself from inside and outside.”
MARINA GRŽINIĆ
(1958) is a doctor of philosophy and works as a research advisor at the Institute of Philosophy of the ZRC SAZU (Science and Research Center of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts) in Ljubljana. She also works as a freelance media theorist, art critic, and curator. She is a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. Marina Gržinić has published hundreds of articles and essays, as well as several books.
MAŠA ĐURIČIĆ
(b. 1979, Serbia) 2003 Graduated at Faculty of Fine Arts in Belgrade, Serbia. 2010 Graduated at Interdisciplinary magister studies of stage design at Belgrade University of Arts. Living and working in Vienna, Austria
MILENA GAJIĆ
(Negotin / Serbia 1985) graduated from the Department of Applied Painting at the Academy of Applied Arts in Belgrade, and is currently studying for a doctorate at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. She participated in several colonies in Serbia and exhibited in the country and abroad.
I have been addressing a problem of painting work in the context of space which enabled me to make a shift in my artistic practice from canvas to a transparent foil. The transparency of the painting’s background enables it to be seen as an image in space, not as a static object on the wall. It gives the painting quality of ‘real space’. By painting scenes of everyday household life on a transparent surface, I can put them in the center of a particular space and accentuate the omnipresence of invisibility of domestic reproductive labor. Scenes of everyday life serve as reminders of an invisible, important sphere of our lives, which is not on the map of the public labor and society.
www.milenagajic.myportfolio.com
www.milenagajicart.myportfolio.com
NATAŠA MACKULJAK
(b. in Brčko, Bosnia and Herzegovina) is a performer, multimedia artist, social worker, curator and cultural producer.
She is currently a Ph.D. candidate at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna, with the thesis On Historical Continuities between Anti-Fascist Women’s Action and Feminist Performance Art in the Former Yugoslavia.
For three years (2016/17/18) she co-curated and co-managed the Transcultural Festival for Art and Activism-Wienwoche where she is currently engaged as executive director.
On Historical Continuities between Radical Leftist Women’s Actions and Feminist Performance Art in Former Yugoslavia
In the history of political struggles in the former-Yugoslav region, women have fought alongside men. This often-overlooked history is significant because these struggles took place in parallel to fights for gender equality. With each new war came a more complex form of participation in the struggle, and by the 1990s, women’s struggles were anti-war, anti-fascist, explicitly feminist and leftist, and, furthermore, integrated into the cultural landscape of the communities.
For this occasion Natasa Mackuljak will give a presentation about women’s anti-fascist actions and solidarity around WW II and the 90ties in the former Yugoslavian space, drawing on her militant research approach.
NEGRA BERNHARD
*1986 in Banja Luka, BIH
2017-2022 Academy of Fine Arts Vienna (Prof. Daniel Richter)
lives and works in Vienna
NEDA NIKOLIĆ
Neda Nikolic (*1988, Leskovac) visual artist from Serbia, lives and works in Vienna since 2012.
In 2016 she graduated from the University of Applied Arts Vienna in the painting class of Prof. Henning Bohl. Prior to that, she completed Painting studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Belgrade, Serbia. She had a few solo and group exhibitions in Vienna and Serbia (Belgrade, Leskovac).
An important topic of her work is a playground, virtual and analog. She deals with the transcription of digital into analog and the moment of transposition in video games. For her, game space is also a utopian space, which she strives to manifest in her body of work. As in real life displacement raised questions of belonging and security, same in her work a displacement is engaged and present through elements and pictures collected in memories.
www.neda-nikolic.com
SANJA LASIĆ
Born in 1987 in Sarajevo (BiH), grew up in the villages of Primorska, Slovenia, studied in Italy and Austria, currently lives and works in Vienna.I am an interdisciplinary artist, working with video, performance, collage, and music. My work is of autobiographical nature and is a direct response to my environment, day-to-day tasks, and current socio-political structures. Sevdah of lost identity is a music-visual project which reflects on the trauma of post-war BiH in exile and its identity. In it I am working with motifs from traditional Sevdalinka songs – a musical genre describing feelings of longing, nostalgia, and love as well as with elements found in Bosnian Ćilim. I am looking at my cultural heritage as a tool for healing, addressing both my personal as well as collective identity.www.sanjalasic.com
R E A L I T I E S is a performance piece, exploring the personal side of the artist’s relation to her country of origin Bosnia and Herzegovina, and its post-war identity which is rooted in her experience as a child refugee and the impact it had on her life. Through the work with traditional music and singing of BiH Sevdalinka songs, she searches for answers related to feelings of shame, exclusion, and displacement. She sheds a harsh critique on the political decisions made thirty years ago which resulted in a war and its consequences, affecting an entire generation of children who today are searching for their lost identity. Text by Sasha Elle
SMIRNA KULENOVIĆ
(Bosnia and Herzegovina) is a transdisciplinary artist, activist, researcher and educator based in Vienna. She holds an MA (2022) from the department of Interface Cultures at the University of Arts and Design Linz, Austria with the topic “Performing Landscapes of Care”. Her practice focuses on performance, participatory, and public art – as methods of addressing cultural, personal, and environmental embodiments of identity and memory in post-crisis and post-war societies. Her latest artistic research focuses on the use of participative performance art in the creation of analog and digital mnemonic landscapes.
She is the founder and artistic coordinator of the Collective for artistic research in public space Dobre Kote in Lisbon (Portugal) and Sarajevo (BiH) and the international Nomadic Collective for Performing Spontaneous Action TAZ 22 (Brazil, Italy, France, Portugal, Austria, Bosnia), as well as the curator and founder of the independent art gallery “Brodac” in Sarajevo. Her works are shown, performed, and kept in collections internationally from the Royal Institute of Arts Stockholm, Courtauld Institute of Arts London, Careof Milan, Atelier Concorde Paris, Museum of Contemporary Art Zagreb, the History Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the National Gallery of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Maneouvre Gallery Berlin, Zaratan Lisbon,…
DO YOU HEAR ME?
The workshop explores ways in which we can harmoniously co-habit public spaces together with human and non-human lifeforms, by using speculative and embodied interspecies communication methods. How to migrate beyond the concept of “other”, by exercising listening, tuning in, and channeling? Through exercises in non-violent and intuitive collaboration within collective rituals, we will experiment with new languages that move beyond ideas of nations, borders, and divisions.