Dragana Žarevac

Dragana Žarevac has a formal education in music but didn’t want to become an opera singer. Instead she studies Philology because “not studying at all was out of the question in my family”. In the 70s she is an eager participant in Belgrade’s art and music scene. At the International Theater Festival (BITEF) and the Students Culture Center she sees performances by Peter Brook, Bob Wilson, Phil Glass, La Monte Young, Joseph Beuys, Gina Pane, Rebecca Horn, Ulrike Rosenbach but also Yugoslavian artists like Marina Abramovic or Bojana Pejic. Experimental film, music and conceptual artworks also by Nesa Paripovic (Marina Abramovic’s first husband) and the performances and sculptures by Marko Pogacnik  (member of the group OHO in 60s and 70s in Slovenia) become influential for her later artistic career that she begins with a performance in 1979. From 1982-1985 she travels to Mexico, Guatemala, USA and deliberately stops doing any public art work: “It was my reaction to the establishment in the art world which I was refusing to accept at that time.” In 1986 she leaves Belgrade out of the feeling that she can’t make any further development there. When she arrives in Paris, where she is offered a job, she discovers artists like Bill Viola, Mona Hatoum or Sadie Benning, artists that work with video in a very personal way. From 1990 to 1994 she receives various production grants from the National Center for Plastic Arts, Paris, the French Ministry of Education as well as from the City of Paris. In 1996, after having returned to Belgrade, the Open Society Fund supports her production »Ocaj - Le Deuil«.

[Last update: 1999]