Sanja IvekovićKunsthalle Wien and Erste Campus
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Kunsthalle Wien is currently devoting a retrospective to the Croatian artist Sanja Iveković, whose “The Invisible Women of Erste Campus” is also being presented. In this filmic work, created around 2016, Iveković shows around 20 women (many of them immigrants) who work as janitorial staff. As part of the present exhibition, this film will be shown at Erste Campus from Monday to Friday from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m.
In Sanja Iveković’s work “Opća opasnost” (Engl.: “General Alert”, 1995), media reality overlays historical events as they transpire: even as the Croatian capital faced rocket attacks during the Yugoslav Wars, television programming continued as if nothing unusual were afoot. “I turned on the TV, and there was this warning on the screen that people should get to safety,” recalls Iveković on this work’s origin. “What interested me here was this idea of people continuing to watch their telenovelas while, in actuality, a war was going on.” Alongside a Croatian series, Iveković also recorded Jean-Luc Godard’s “Breathless” on her VCR. Displayed on the screen is a state-issued emergency warning to seek shelter.
This melding of media content and real life is paradigmatic of Iveković’s entire oeuvre. In numerous video- and photographic works, the artist reconstructs mass media strategies—exposing their manipulative mechanisms by way of approaches such as the interrelation of documentary material with advertising motifs. The series “Gen XX” (1997–2001) features six photographs of professional models combined by Iveković with biographical information on women of the antifascist resistance. She borrowed these pictures, which include top models of the 1990s such as Linda Evangelista, from advertisements in fashion magazines. The women introduced by the headings and subtitles, however, lived during World War II and ultimately died in the fight against fascism and for a socialist revolution. These one-time national heroines had receded into obscurity in the decidedly anti-communist climate of the 1990s, but “Gen XX” invokes them as ancestors.
Sanja Iveković was born in 1949 and studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb from 1968 to 1971. Of particular interest are her works that engage with socialist Yugoslavia’s state media. She is viewed as one the first artists from her country to have taken up a decidedly feminist stance, preoccupying herself with women’s role in her era’s political context. “I belong to a generation that resists the modernist idea of an artistic style. For my works, I chose the medium that was most appropriate. And regardless of whether it was collages, performances, or video games: what was central was a work’s message,” Iveković explains.
Throughout her oeuvre, she is consistent in her documentary approach. Each of her artistic works relates to a historical event. To this artist’s mind, art should deal with everyday life—and above all with the everyday life of women, as is also shown by Iveković’s most recent work “Shadow Report”, which can be seen in Kunsthalle Wien’s exhibition “Works of Heart (1974–2022)”. Strewn all over the floor, one sees crumpled pieces of red paper—the “shadow report” of an NGO. Since 1998, Iveković has been working together with women’s rights organizations that publish statistics on gender-specific violence. Their figures are significantly higher than those put out by official bodies. Her current work in Vienna is devoted to the topic of violence against refugee women.
In Iveković’s engagement with media realities, the feminist conception of the private and public spheres plays a pivotal role—and in “General Alert”, a publicly conceived reality is inscribed onto private media consumption. Viewed from another perspective, though, it might actually be precisely the private experience of the war’s horrors that is countering the public and/or televised world of make-believe. Here, like in many other works, Iveković flirts with presuppositions and facilitates playful interpretation of what might be going on.
Especially in the context of present-day media realities, Iveković’s works seem as topical as ever. Media representation of women as objects has even increased in a good many areas, holds the artist, who also says: “I want to render the invisible visible.”
It was in 2001, at Innsbruck’s Galerie im Taxispalais, that Iveković’s works were given their first comprehensive presentation in Austria. Further exhibitions took place at the Kölnischer Kunstverein (2006/2007), the MoMa in New York (2011/12), the South London Gallery & Calvert 22 (2012/13), and the Eighth Gwangju Biennale in South Korea (2010). Iveković also took part in Kassel’s documenta in 1987, 2002, 2007, 2012, and 2017.
Lina Paulitsch is a journalist. She lives and works in Vienna.
January 2023
In Sanja Iveković’s work “Opća opasnost” (Engl.: “General Alert”, 1995), media reality overlays historical events as they transpire: even as the Croatian capital faced rocket attacks during the Yugoslav Wars, television programming continued as if nothing unusual were afoot. “I turned on the TV, and there was this warning on the screen that people should get to safety,” recalls Iveković on this work’s origin. “What interested me here was this idea of people continuing to watch their telenovelas while, in actuality, a war was going on.” Alongside a Croatian series, Iveković also recorded Jean-Luc Godard’s “Breathless” on her VCR. Displayed on the screen is a state-issued emergency warning to seek shelter.
This melding of media content and real life is paradigmatic of Iveković’s entire oeuvre. In numerous video- and photographic works, the artist reconstructs mass media strategies—exposing their manipulative mechanisms by way of approaches such as the interrelation of documentary material with advertising motifs. The series “Gen XX” (1997–2001) features six photographs of professional models combined by Iveković with biographical information on women of the antifascist resistance. She borrowed these pictures, which include top models of the 1990s such as Linda Evangelista, from advertisements in fashion magazines. The women introduced by the headings and subtitles, however, lived during World War II and ultimately died in the fight against fascism and for a socialist revolution. These one-time national heroines had receded into obscurity in the decidedly anti-communist climate of the 1990s, but “Gen XX” invokes them as ancestors.
Sanja Iveković was born in 1949 and studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb from 1968 to 1971. Of particular interest are her works that engage with socialist Yugoslavia’s state media. She is viewed as one the first artists from her country to have taken up a decidedly feminist stance, preoccupying herself with women’s role in her era’s political context. “I belong to a generation that resists the modernist idea of an artistic style. For my works, I chose the medium that was most appropriate. And regardless of whether it was collages, performances, or video games: what was central was a work’s message,” Iveković explains.
Throughout her oeuvre, she is consistent in her documentary approach. Each of her artistic works relates to a historical event. To this artist’s mind, art should deal with everyday life—and above all with the everyday life of women, as is also shown by Iveković’s most recent work “Shadow Report”, which can be seen in Kunsthalle Wien’s exhibition “Works of Heart (1974–2022)”. Strewn all over the floor, one sees crumpled pieces of red paper—the “shadow report” of an NGO. Since 1998, Iveković has been working together with women’s rights organizations that publish statistics on gender-specific violence. Their figures are significantly higher than those put out by official bodies. Her current work in Vienna is devoted to the topic of violence against refugee women.
In Iveković’s engagement with media realities, the feminist conception of the private and public spheres plays a pivotal role—and in “General Alert”, a publicly conceived reality is inscribed onto private media consumption. Viewed from another perspective, though, it might actually be precisely the private experience of the war’s horrors that is countering the public and/or televised world of make-believe. Here, like in many other works, Iveković flirts with presuppositions and facilitates playful interpretation of what might be going on.
Especially in the context of present-day media realities, Iveković’s works seem as topical as ever. Media representation of women as objects has even increased in a good many areas, holds the artist, who also says: “I want to render the invisible visible.”
It was in 2001, at Innsbruck’s Galerie im Taxispalais, that Iveković’s works were given their first comprehensive presentation in Austria. Further exhibitions took place at the Kölnischer Kunstverein (2006/2007), the MoMa in New York (2011/12), the South London Gallery & Calvert 22 (2012/13), and the Eighth Gwangju Biennale in South Korea (2010). Iveković also took part in Kassel’s documenta in 1987, 2002, 2007, 2012, and 2017.
Lina Paulitsch is a journalist. She lives and works in Vienna.
January 2023