Moments. Gespräch mit Sanja Iveković

Since her first appearance in the context of the “New Art Practice” in Yugoslavia of the early 1970s, in her works Sanja Iveković has transformed the medial construction of images and the constellations of power which they conceal. Here the artist is primarily concerned with the exploration of images and spaces attached to women. Iveković also extended critical reflections of the media to the analysis of the institutional conditions and rituals of the art scene. The series of three performances from this period and presented in Moments, actively brings the public into the interplay of media presence, as well as real presence and absence.
Sanja Iveković is one of the first artists in former Yugoslavia to have combined performance and video art. Over the course of the 1990s, she gave her work greater political accentuation and, as feminist activist, also initiated important projects. Her performance Practice Makes a Master will be re-enacted by Sonja Pregrad as part of the exhibition opening on March 17, 2012 and March 18, 2012 at 4 pm.

Sanja Iveković (*1949 in Zagreb, Croatia, former Yugoslavia) studied from 1968 to 1971 at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb. Her photo montages, videos, performances and installations emerging since the early 1970s have been characterized by a critical questioning of the mass media and their identity-forging potential. By personally entering into public discourse ‒ whether in the form of photographic representations in the media, or as the actual protagonist of performances ‒ Iveković brings out into the open the collective social codes of behavior based on gender-specific standardized patterns in mass media. As one of the first explicitly feminist artists in Croatia, she has also been the facilitator and founder of a large number of political initiatives including the Women Artists’ Center Elektra and the Center for Women’s Studies in Zagreb. Iveković participated in numerous international exhibitions including documenta 11, and 12 and Manifesta 2. In November 2011, her retrospective Lady Rosa of Luxembourg took place at the MoMA New York.