Ivana Ivković (b. 1979 in Belgrade) observes that in moments of upheaval, artwork watches and waits. The Serbian artist works within the house between vulnerability and resistance, and he or she has taken to the streets. Her multidisciplinary observe traverses drawing, images, set up, and delegated efficiency, and Ivković typically makes use of the male physique to look at energy, belief, foreshadowing, and collapse. She notes, on this manner, that her work transcends time.
Rising up in Belgrade in the course of the Nineties anti-war protests, Ivković continues to hitch college students and residents in what she calls “a real political avant-garde” in opposition to corruption. For the artist, these demonstrations reside artistic endeavors, composed of our bodies in movement, of individuals coming collectively in a choreography of resistance. Her upcoming tasks exude this identical urgency. The Area, the end result of her “Monument of Belief” collection, will seem on the Belgrade Truthful, whereas Ivković’s exhibition COM/PASSION will premiere on the Faculty of Fine Arts in Belgrade, the place she serves because the establishment’s 2025 alumni artist. For the artist, artmaking shouldn’t be a type of documentation however a vector of anticipation that registers and predicts the long run.
Drawing lies on the middle of Ivković’s work, a way she describes as pondering, feeling, and shifting by the world. With influences starting from Pier Paolo Pasolini and David Lynch to Louise Bourgeois’s Destruction of the Father, which she carries together with her like a bible, her observe is inherently queer. That’s, the artist’s work doesn’t provide conclusions however creates areas the place energy dynamics may be seen, felt, and questioned in actual time. As patriarchal buildings symbolically fall, Ivković’s delegated performances turn out to be monuments to that collapse, to not mourn, however to invoke one thing new completely.
Charles Moore: Your work traverses drawing, efficiency, images, and set up—typically mixing intimate, emotional, and political dimensions. How would you introduce your self and your observe to somebody encountering your work for the primary time?
Ivana Ivković: Working on the intersection of private expertise and societal constructs, my work explores belief, post-patriarchy, and energy dynamics—primarily by delegated efficiency, typically utilizing the male physique as a performative device. I’m drawn to the strain between vulnerability and resistance, intimacy and management. The physique, each particular person and collective, turns into a website of inquiry—a vessel of historical past, want, and battle. My performances, drawings, and installations don’t provide fastened solutions however create areas the place that means stays fluid, formed by the gaze and participation of others. Delegated efficiency, particularly, permits me to look at shifting company and the twin nature of our bodies as each symbols and realities. By subverting expectations, I search to unsettle and provoke a confrontation with what’s taken as a right.
I’ve been pondering intensely in regards to the function of artwork—whether or not it could really reply to the world we reside in now. Does it maintain any potential for change? After which I look again at my very own work and understand how a lot it has foreshadowed what is occurring as we speak. Artwork’s energy lies in its potential to anticipate, to pierce by time and glimpse the long run. That thought comforts me, restoring artwork’s sense of function.
Just a few months in the past, I used to be invited by the College of Wonderful Arts in Belgrade, the place I studied and earned my doctorate, to be this 12 months’s alumni artist Honored, I proposed an exhibition on resistance inside the establishment, questioning compassion and solidarity as important values that have to be reexamined. I used to be additionally drawn to the previous Akademija Membership—as soon as an iconic various venue, now hardly ever open for artwork. I envisioned a efficiency: a frozen membership scene, a mosh pit charged with revolutionary vitality. I wished to return to the concept that, deep inside the school, this membership as soon as stood as a real house of resistance and freedom. Twenty days later, college students occupied the college in response to a nationwide disaster. After a station roof collapsed in Novi Unhappy—an enormous tragedy brought on by corruption—public outrage erupted. In a rustic strangled by dictatorship, college students took the lead, demanding accountability, a return to basic institutional values, and sounding the alarm for a society in deep disaster. In a daring and pressing act, college students despatched a letter to universities worldwide, declaring: Everybody has a purpose to blockade their college nowadays; the world we reside in and consultant democracy itself are in profound disaster. It was not only a name to motion however a fearless assertion that the time for complacency had handed. And that retains me at peace, realizing I caught the second exactly. In instances of upheaval, maybe artwork waits and observes. Proper now, I’ve nothing extra to say—the whole lot I stand for, I’m demonstrating within the streets. The inventive response will are available in time—in any case, artwork at all times seems forward.
You have been born in Belgrade, a metropolis with a charged historical past and a vibrant cultural scene. How has that formed your inventive voice and the way in which you strategy themes of energy, want, and human fragility?
Rising up in Belgrade within the Nineties, I used to be immersed in anti-war and political protests—streets grew to become arenas of resistance, calls for for change, and the need to rewrite our futures. Immediately, I discover myself again on these streets, actively engaged as soon as once more. The protests in opposition to corruption in Serbia, led by a robust scholar blockade that I already talked about, has expanded to incorporate staff and residents, have turn out to be a real political avant-garde. They problem energy buildings, reshape the political panorama, and reimagine collective motion. Being a part of them appears like witnessing, in actual time, the very concepts I’ve explored in my inventive observe coming to life.
My work has at all times explored energy, want, and human fragility, with the streets as a relentless reference level. Efficiency permits direct engagement with these tensions—an area for each vulnerability and power, particular person presence and collective motion. Delegated performances have lengthy examined collective our bodies as websites of energy, id, unity, and compassion. However now, the streets are not only a place of inspiration; they’re the place I stand, absolutely current in a dwelling, collective expertise. The values I as soon as conceptualized are unfolding earlier than me. Balancing private and collective motion—moderation in life—has at all times guided my observe. Proper now, the streets are redefining these rules. These protests should not simply political acts; they’re dwelling artistic endeavors—our bodies in movement, a choreography of resistance, urgency, and hope.
Your influences span cinema, literature, and underground tradition. Are you able to pinpoint a couple of pivotal works—whether or not movies, books, or artists—which have considerably formed your imaginative and prescient?
Itemizing names has by no means been my factor; I see it as an unfair choice, since numerous authors have formed my mind-set and seeing the world. Any choice is merely a mirrored image of a short lived frame of mind. However…two filmmakers I contemplate basic, each philosophically and aesthetically, are Pier Paolo Pasolini and David Lynch. In numerous methods, their work embodies radical imaginative and prescient and poetic resistance, and I maintain them within the highest regard. Louise Bourgeois stays a relentless inspiration; Destruction of the Father, Reconstruction of the Father is one thing I carry like a bible. Her lifelong return to the identical questions proves that true inventive inquiry isn’t static. Philosophy—particularly up to date thought in gender and cultural research—has been important in shaping my perspective. Whereas naming influences at all times appears like an arbitrary act of choice, I point out Hannah Arendt out of deep respect reasonably than as a singular reference. The identical dilemma applies to literature—a lot has left an imprint that any listing feels inadequate. Sure names floor instinctively proper now like Marcel Proust, Constantine Cavafy, Daniil Kharms, Danilo Kiš… Music, past language, shapes rhythm, environment, and emotion in methods phrases can not seize. And at last, years of psychoanalysis have imprinted each my life and work, reinforcing my perception that artwork, just like the thoughts, is a negotiation between the identified and unknown—an area the place that means isn’t fastened however repeatedly unfolding.
Your drawings typically really feel like they exist in a liminal house between the tangible and the ephemeral, the managed and the spontaneous. Are you able to stroll us by your strategy to drawing—what compels you towards this medium, and the way do you steadiness precision with intuition?
Drawing has at all times been the muse of my observe—a mind-set, feeling, and navigating the world. It merges instinct and construction, precision and intuition. Over time, I’ve pushed its limits, increasing into efficiency, images, installations, and textiles. It’s the place introspection meets broader social and political landscapes, the place pictures, textual content, and symbols slowly take form by fixed motion throughout locations and histories.
I typically really feel that drawing anticipates the long run. Virtually each place I’ve visited, I had already drawn earlier than arriving. Some moments have been so exact they left me surprised—just like the evening in a Moroccan fortress when a sudden windstorm introduced a swarm of scorpions, precisely as I had drawn ten years earlier. The colours, the metal-framed mattress, the shifting mild—the whole lot was the identical. Panic! I had been obsessing over scorpions since my first time within the desert, anticipating them to seem. After which they did. Or the time I canceled a flight from Toronto attributable to an inexplicable unease, solely to later recall a drawing I had titled Canada Superstition Catastrophe—a warning from my previous self to belief my instinct.
In some ways, my efficiency work now appears like an extension of these early drawings. A drawing I made on the finish of artwork faculty—and a relationship—No Extra Pera (my ex’s title was Petar) one way or the other foreshadowed the whole Monuments collection. All the things I as soon as placed on paper has both occurred or discovered its manner into my work in one other type. Whether or not it’s instinct, unconscious mapping, or one thing stranger, drawing has at all times been my manner of glimpsing what’s forward—an act of creation that extends past the web page and into life itself.
Your work has an simple sense of environment—typically cinematic, virtually noir-like in its interaction of shadows and stark contrasts. Do you see your items as stills from a bigger narrative, and do you consciously construct an overarching storyline throughout your collection?
Narrative is central to my work, however it doesn’t unfold linearly. It emerges in layers and fragments that accumulate over time. The interaction of shadow and distinction, that noir-like sensibility you point out, is deeply tied to my fascination with movie and the authors I’ve referenced. Movie and images form my observe greater than another medium. But, the nonetheless picture in my work isn’t completely nonetheless, it holds the strain of one thing that has simply occurred or is about to occur, moments extracted from a narrative unfolding throughout a number of varieties. Textual content is as integral because the physique. The physique itself is a message, holding historical past, trauma, want – one thing to be learn, interpreted, rewritten. That is why my work interprets so naturally into the format of a e book. An inner narrative runs by the whole lot I do, typically surfacing clearly, typically reemerging in surprising methods. The story is at all times there, unfolding, ready to be deciphered.
You’ve explored efficiency as a way of engagement, notably in your challenge IN HIM WE TRUST (2016-2020) and MONUMENTS (2021- ongoing) the place you intervened in city areas. What attracts you to efficiency as a medium, and the way does it differ out of your expertise with static visible work?
Efficiency, for me, is immediacy and danger. It unfolds in real-time, demanding presence – not simply from the performers, however from the viewers as effectively. Not like static visible work, which permits for contemplation at a distance, efficiency collapses that house. It’s a charged, collective occasion that resists repetition and documentation; it exists absolutely solely within the second of its taking place. In IN HIM WE TRUST and MONUMENTS, working in city areas meant confronting historical past, energy, and presence in real-time. The physique isn’t just a medium however a website of negotiation—uncovered, susceptible, unfiltered. Not like an art work that is still in place, ready to be considered, efficiency forces an encounter. The town itself responds—folks cease, react, intervene. It’s a dialogue, not an announcement. What attracts me to efficiency is its refusal to be fastened. It can’t be owned, revisited in the identical manner, or absolutely captured. It isn’t an object however an occasion, an act of disappearance as a lot as an act of presence. That stress, between the ephemeral and the visceral, between what’s seen and what’s felt, is what makes it irreplaceable.
Your work often explores themes of energy and management, significantly in relation to gender and want. Do you see your artwork as a critique, an exploration, or one thing extra private—maybe an unfolding dialogue?
Energy and management should not summary—they’re lived realities, shifting by historical past, context, and our bodies. My work doesn’t provide conclusions however creates areas the place these forces may be seen, felt, and questioned in actual time.
In delegated performances like TRUST, MONUMENTS, and IN HIM WE TRUST, I confront the collapse of methods that formed our actuality—patriarchy, capitalism, the phantasm of secure id. These buildings have symbolically fallen, but their remnants nonetheless govern us. My work isn’t just a critique however a monument to that collapse—not in mourning, however as an invocation of one thing new. Monument: No One is Misplaced shouldn’t be a lament however a declaration: when oppressive energy crumbles, everybody has the possibility to seek out their very own manner. Artwork has the correct to think about new (collective) values, irrespective of how utopian they might appear.
Over time, my focus has shifted from deeply private themes to an pressing engagement with social realities. Delegated efficiency creates a simulacrum of actuality, the place the perversion of efficiency collides with the perversion we reside in. It holds up a mirror—exposing financial forces and energy dynamics, not simply staging actuality however deconstructing it. My exploration of masculinity was a solution to find energy’s fractures and reclaim it—by myself phrases. I don’t inherit energy; I expose its instability. My observe is inherently queer, not simply in its engagement with gender transitions, however in its insistence that transformation is the elemental state of existence. Id shouldn’t be fastened; survival is determined by fluidity and openness, past dogmas that search to constrain us. Efficiency is a rupture—a break from inherited buildings and a gap towards one thing past management, but collectively imagined.
The male gaze has traditionally dominated representations of the physique, however your work subverts and challenges it in compelling methods. How do you navigate the facility dynamics of wanting and being checked out in your compositions?
The act of wanting isn’t impartial. It’s a type of energy, a manner of defining who holds floor and who’s left uncovered. The male gaze has lengthy positioned girls as passive objects, their picture present solely for male pleasure. However my work shouldn’t be about reversing this dynamic—it’s about dismantling the whole mechanism of the gaze and reclaiming what was by no means meant to be given away.
In delegated performances, I invert its logic: males are positioned on show, however they aren’t passively consumed. Their our bodies exist in a state of uncertainty, caught between monumentality and collapse, between vulnerability and power. The efficiency turns into a mirror, not simply reflecting historical past however revealing how its weight nonetheless shapes our current. At first, they stand uncovered, held within the viewers’s gaze. However one thing shifts. They regroup, reorganize, and return the look. All of the sudden, the viewers is the one laid naked. Disgrace strikes from one aspect to the opposite, exposing not simply what we do to one another, however how we endure.
That is the place Julia Kristeva’s concepts turn out to be essential. In Strangers to Ourselves, she describes the foreigner as somebody who “dwells inside us,” a reminder that otherness shouldn’t be merely exterior however one thing we stock inside. The gaze shouldn’t be solely about gender; it’s about visibility, about energy’s shifting fault strains, about who’s seen and who’s rendered unseen, about who belongs and who stays an outsider.
Performing in several cultural contexts—Berlin, Athens, Novi Unhappy, Porto—I witness how the identical bodily gestures are learn in radically other ways. A stance that means defiance in a single setting could sign give up in one other. The collective physique and the viewers exist in fixed stress, formed by the histories embedded in every location. And but, throughout all these contexts, one factor stays true: wanting is fragile, advanced. It’s by no means simply an act of dominance. It may be a gap, a negotiation, even an act of care.
Queerness in my work isn’t just id—it’s methodology. It unsettles energy, dissolves hierarchies. Efficiency turns the male gaze into confrontation and transformation. Figures society retains aside—soccer followers, trans males, staff, elites—stand aspect by aspect, uncovered to the identical gaze. This isn’t about erasing distinction however revealing surprising solidarities. Energy shifts. Id evolves. Contradiction shouldn’t be weak spot however the spark of latest methods of seeing—and being seen.
You’ve created collection that incorporate fragmented or obscured figures, typically eradicating id markers altogether. What does abstraction help you categorical that realism won’t?
Abstraction unsettles notion. Stripping away id markers doesn’t erase the physique – it frees it from fastened definitions. Fragmentation and obscuring aren’t acts of concealment however methods of unveiling what resists rapid comprehension. Collage has at all times drawn me, each in drawing and efficiency, as a result of it permits seemingly incompatible parts to coexist. A physique in items shouldn’t be a physique undone – it’s a physique in transition, negotiating its personal that means. Artwork shouldn’t be a passport with stamped knowledge; it’s a house the place id slips past labels, into one thing fluid, unresolved, and alive.
Your work has traveled throughout Europe, Asia, and North America, and now you’re partaking with dsbooks in Morocco and the U.S. How does place affect your work? Do you end up adapting your strategy primarily based on cultural or political contexts?
I like to drive! Touring, observing, absorbing—typically I wrestle with the final one, taking in an excessive amount of and never leaving sufficient time to digest all of it. 🙂 Motion isn’t only a lifestyle; it’s the core of my work. It doesn’t exist in isolation however responds to the tensions, rhythms, and unstated guidelines of every place. Whether or not by delegated efficiency, drawing, or set up, I interact with house as a dwelling entity, the place histories intersect and new meanings emerge. Morocco pulls me towards its thresholds—the place previous and future blur, the place the traveler and the native intertwine. The U.S. vibrates with a unique stress, a spot of fragmentation, the place myths of self-reliance conflict with the eager for collective narratives. My work is a map of motion, not simply by geography, however by methods of energy, reminiscence, and belief.
Dealing with Morocco was the primary in your ongoing Dealing with collection with ds books, and now you’re engaged on Dealing with California & Arizona. What sparked this challenge, and what connections or contrasts have you ever discovered between these areas?
Dealing with is a collection created in collaboration with dsbooks from Basel, with Dragana Radivojević because the editor and me offering the fabric from my travels. These books should not simply travelogues; they’re curated cinematic experiences formed by Dragana’s editorial imaginative and prescient and my inventive documentation—images, notes, poems, diaries. Regardless of realizing me so effectively, she nonetheless takes the time to decipher my journeys, crafting every e book like a movie that doesn’t simply reconstruct my travels however reveals artwork as a necessary survival device. Dealing with is in regards to the intersection of artwork and journey, about how shifting by the world modifications us, typically in methods we don’t count on.
Dealing with Morocco was my private The Sheltering Sky, solely to understand that the romance of desert life, very like the tea itself, shouldn’t be at all times as candy as imagined. Deep within the dunes, in an artist residency removed from the whole lot acquainted, I needed to confront my anxieties—fears that had nothing to do with the huge, empty landscapes and the whole lot to do with the unknown. In the meantime, Dealing with California & Arizona is a lockdown fever dream—a Hollywood movie I by no means meant to star in. What was alleged to be a short go to changed into 5 months of watch out what you want for, stranded in a spot of cinematic illusions and private disillusionment. Love, in fact, performed a task—a storyline that, like many Hollywood productions, didn’t fairly have the ending I anticipated. If Morocco was a lesson in solitude and California a crash course in phantasm, then Dealing with is the thread that weaves them collectively. These books are visual-poetic essays, movies in e book type, the place journey isn’t just motion by house however a confrontation with the self. As a result of in the long run, the locations we go to change us, and what we create from them is what really issues.
Trying forward, what are you most enthusiastic about in your observe? Any upcoming tasks or experiments that really feel like a brand new problem for you?
Trying forward, I’m most enthusiastic about The Area, the end result of The Monument of Belief challenge, set to happen on the Belgrade Truthful—an iconic modernist construction now below menace from neoliberal city enlargement and corruption-driven demolitions. Whereas residents actively resist these shadowy, anti-urban erasures of cultural and architectural heritage, the shifting societal panorama offers us hope that this ultimate act of The Monument of Belief will unfold in a brand new spirit. This efficiency will channel the tensions between energy, resistance, and collective company, exposing the methods corruption seeps into each bodily and social buildings.
On the identical time, I’m honored to be this 12 months’s alumni artist on the College of Wonderful Arts in Belgrade, the place I’m engaged on the exhibition COM/PASSION. This challenge stems from the assumption that artwork shouldn’t be merely a doc of its time however an affective vector of anticipation—it doesn’t merely characterize however registers, articulates, and even predicts the upcoming. Fairly than reconstructing the previous, COM/PASSION creates a productive stress between archival traces and up to date urgencies, exploring artwork as a type of epistemological hypothesis.
Each The Area and COM/PASSION communicate to the urgency of connection, collective consciousness, and belief in artwork as a transformative power. And that’s why I’m really comfortable to see solidarity alive once more on our streets—nowadays greater than ever.
