performance, Gallery of Contemporary Art, Zagreb (HR), 1976; Tommaseo Gallery, Trieste (IT), 1977
reenactment with Ivana Roščić, SC Gallery / Student Center, Zagreb (HR), 2009
Performed at the opening of the artist's solo exhibition in the Zagreb Gallery of Contemporary Art (1976) and later at the Tommaseo Gallery in Trieste (1977), Opening is Sanja Iveković's first performance and, in the local context, on of the earliest performances thematizing the artist's body. It is an explicit definition of the artist as an embodied (female) subject, who not only shows her art as an intellectual/aesthetic practice displayed on gallery walls but whose body, subjectivity, feeling, or literally "flesh", is inseparable from her work. The artist exposed herself in the gallery space, where she met each visitor who entered the gallery, her mouth sealed with tape eliminating all verbal/intellectual communication and a stethoscope connecting her body to the speakers that transmitted the sound of her heartbeat. Her contact with each visitor was photographed and later exhibited, together with the corresponding recording of the heartbeat.
Sanja Iveković (HR)
Sanja Iveković was born in 1949, in Zagreb, where she currently lives and works. She studied at the Zagreb Academy of Fine Arts from 1968 to 1971 and her early practice in the 1970s was associated with ‘Nova Umjetnička Praksa’ (New Art Practice), a generation of artists in Yugoslavia who questioned the role of art in society and strove to democratise artistic space by abandoning galleries and taking to the streets through performances and the use of cheap, accessible materials. Iveković’s point of departure has been her own life and social positioning as a woman, the influence of mass media as well as the politics of power in the contexts of socialist and post-socialist society. Selected solo exhibitions include: The Disobedients (Neposlušni/e), Galerija SC, Zagreb, Croatia, 2012; Visages du Langage, MAC/VAL, France, 2012; Waiting for the Revolution, Mudam Luxembourg, 2012; Sweet Violence, MoMA, New York, 2011; Urgent Matters, BAK Utrecht and the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, 2009; General Alert, Kölnischer Kunstverein, Cologne, 2007. Selected group exhibitions include: A Bigger Splash: Painting after Performance, Tate Modern, 2012; Promises of the Past, Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2012; Gender Check: Femininity and Masculinity in the Art of Eastern Europe, Zacheta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw, 2010; After the Wall: Art in Post-Communist Europe, Ludwig Museum, Budapest, 2000; and several shows at the Generali Foundation in Vienna from 2000–2005. Iveković has participated in the Gwangju Biennale in 2010, in dOCUMENTA (13), (12), (11) and (8), in 2012, 2007, 2002 and 1987, and the Istanbul Biennial, 2009 and 2007. Her works have repeatedly won prizes at film and video festivals, including Locarno and Montreal. She is the facilitator and founder of a large number of political initiatives including Electra – The Women’s Art Centre and the Centre for Women’s Studies in Zagreb.
sanjai@zamir.net
