Sanja Iveković
Urgent Matters
18.04.–02.08.2009
A two-part solo exhibition organized by BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht, and the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven
www.bak-utrecht.nl
www.vanabbemuseum.nl
Sanja Iveković (born 1949, lives and works in Zagreb, Croatia) is one of the key artists of her generation working today. Her work can be characterized as a critical artistic practice, invested in the politics of image and body and an analysis of identity constructions in the media, employing strategies of political engagement, solidarity, and activism. Since the 1970s, Iveković works in a range of media such as photography, performance, video, installations, and actions. Since 1989, Iveković mainly deals with the collapse of socialist regimes in Eastern Europe, and the consequences of the triumph of global capitalism on living conditions, particularly of women. In her persistent exploration of the border between the public and private self, Iveković subtly insinuates the collective responsibility we share for the things that take place around us.
From her early photography and performance work through to the major collaborative and public projects of recent years, the constraints of politics, economics, and gender consistently serve as an inevitable backdrop to Iveković’s works—a position that survives the political changes of 1989 altered but intact. The two parts of the exhibition are organized around this turning point, which marked the end of real existing socialism in the Eastern Bloc and, though not properly recognized in the so-called West, also the end of a particular understanding of social democracy. It also underlines the different ways in which the notion of the political is established through Iveković’s practice.
The exhibition at the Van Abbemuseum casts a retrospective view, focusing on historical work from mainly before 1989 consisting primarily of photographic series, collages, and filmed performances. The works are installed around the large vertical space of the museum tower, where a newer monumental sculpture, originally realized as a public art project in Luxemburg in 2001, Lady Rosa of Luxembourg, is reconstructed. At BAK, a selection of more recent work is shown, including a number of productions realized for this occasion, among them a new version of Iveković’s well-known work Women’s House, a collective portrait of women from local shelters for abused women. The exhibition is also planned to extend into the public realm with the artist’s proposal to rename a city street in Utrecht after the Unknown Heroine. During the opening of the exhibition, the performance Übung Macht den Meister (Practice Makes a Master), originally realized by Iveković in 1982 in Berlin, will be re-enacted by dancer Sonja Pregrad, at 20.00 hrs.
Symposium: When is Feminism in Art? The Case of Sanja Iveković
28.05.2009, 11.00–18.00 hrs
On Thursday 28 May 2009, BAK and the Van Abbemuseum organize When is Feminism in Art? The Case of Sanja Iveković. This one-day symposium aims to contribute to the knowledge and understanding of the history of art in the Central and Eastern European region through a concrete case of the evolution of a feminist position in a particular cultural and political topography.
Speakers include: Katy Deepwell, founder and editor of n.paradoxa: international feminist art journal, London; Tom Holert, art historian and cultural critic, Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna/Berlin; Nataša Ilić, curator and member of the curatorial collective What, How and for Whom/WHW, Zagreb; Bojana Pejić, art historian and curator, Berlin; and Georg Schöllhammer, writer and editor-in-chief, Springerin, Vienna.
The project is curated by Maria Hlavajova.
Reservations are required for both the opening and symposium. For more information on the exhibition and for reservations, please visit www.bak-utrecht.nl or www.vanabbemuseum.nl.
BAK, basis voor actuele kunst
Lange Nieuwstraat 4
3512 PH
Utrecht
the Netherlands
www.bak-utrecht.nl
Van Abbemuseum
Bilderdijklaan 10
Eindhoven
the Netherlands
www.vanabbemuseum.nl
