Make Up Make Down
espaivisor - galería visor presenta el trabajo de la artista Sanja Iveković (Zagreb, Croacia, 1949). La exposición, titulada Make Up - Make Down, consta de una selección de obras, realizada por la propia artista para la ocasión, basando su elección en aquellos trabajos en los que se analiza la imagen de la mujer en los mass media. Sanja Iveković ha sido considerada una de las pioneras en la utilización del vídeo y en abordar cuestiones feministas. A través de fotomontajes y videos Sanja repasa su propia trayectoria, incluyendo obras tan representativas como Paper Woman (1996 - 1997) perteneciente a los inicios de su carrera, y obras más recientes como Figure & Ground (2005 - 2005). La obra de Sanja ha estado presente en numerosas exposiciones internacionales tanto individuales como colectivas, destacando Documenta XI y XII, Manifesta 2, o La batalla de los géneros (CGAC).
Obras en exposición:
PAPER WOMEN (MUJERES DE PAPEL) 1976 - 1977
7 photo-collages: 2 x (33 x 39,5 cm), 3 x (23 x 31,5 cm), 1 (25,5 x 43,3 cm), 1 (25 x 34,5 cm)
Esta serie consiste en ilustraciones de varias revistas femeninas que Sanja Iveković ha alterado o estropeado de algún modo. Algunas las ha hecho trizas, otras las ha arañado o agujereado. Esta agresión física a las ilustraciones crea una sensación de inquietud.
MAKE UP – MAKE DOWN (MAQUILLAJE – DESMAQUILLAJE) 1976 (versión b/n), 1978 (versión color)
Vídeo, color, sonido, 9 min 36 s
La artista realiza los movimientos cotidianos ralentizados, confiriendo al acto habitual de maquillarse el carácter de un ritual.
GEN XX 1997 - 2001
1 offset print / 70 x 100 cm
El proyecto GEN XX es una serie de trabajos fotográficos diseñados con la forma de anuncios de revistas, publicados entre 1997 y 1998 en Arkzin, Zaposlena, Frakcija, Kruh i ruze y Kontura.
Las mujeres que aparecen en las fotografías son modelos cuyos rostros resultan familiares para el gran público. Las mujeres representadas en el texto (todas ellas proclamadas oficialmente “Heroínas nacionales”) eran bastante conocidas para los miembros de las generaciones que crecieron durante el periodo socialista de la antigua Yugoslavia. Para los jóvenes croatas de hoy en día, estas mujeres son unas desconocidas o han sido borradas de la memoria colectiva. La madre de la artista, Nera Safaric, aparece representada con una fotografía original suya, tomada dos años antes de que fuera capturada y enviada a Auschwitz, donde permaneció hasta que el país fue liberado.
La documentación sobre las “heroínas”, se publicó en el libro Zene Hrvatske u narodnooslobodilackoj borbi (Mujeres croatas en la guerra de la Liberación Nacional), Graficki Zavod Hrvatske, Zagreb, 1955.
WOMEN`S HOUSE (SUNGLASSES), (GAFAS DE SOL) 2002 - 2004
4 posters 4 x (48 x 67 cm)
Suncane naocale (Gafas de Sol) forma parte del proyecto Zenska Kuca (Hogar para mujeres), en el que la artista se centra en la violencia contra las mujeres. El proyecto Zenska kuca se ha presentado en varias ciudades. Zagreb, Bangkok, Luxemburgo y Pristina. Suncane naokale consiste en una serie de collages en los que Iveković utiliza anuncios de varias marcas famosas de gafas de sol. Encima de los anuncios la artista ha escrito relatos de mujeres que han sufrido violencia y maltratos en casa y han tenido que refugiarse en centros de acogida para mujeres maltratadas. La obra se ha publicado como carteles, en periódicos, revistas y como impresiones de exposición.
GENERAL ALERT (SOAP OPERA), ALERTA GENERAL (CULEBRÓN) 1995
Video, color, sonido, 5 min
Un televisor muestra imágenes de vídeo, tomadas de una emisión del canal de televisión pública croata Hrvatska radiotelevizija, durante uno de los momentos en que se lanzaron los últimos misiles sobre Zagreb. El vídeo reproduce un culebrón latinoamericano con subtítulos en croata y la sobreimpresión “OPCA OPASNOST ZAGREB” (ALERTA GENERAL EN ZAGREB)
FIGURE & GROUND (FIGURA Y FONDO) 2005 - 2006
La serie consiste en ocho pares de fotomontajes. Cada par está formado por fotos documentales de diferentes fuentes (revistas como Der Spiegel, Newsweek, The Times, Vjesnik, e Internet), y páginas de la revista de moda The Face (no 56, septiembre 2001)
8 fotomontajes: 7 x (50 x 30 cm), 1 x (70 x 30 cm)
2 partes cada uno, uno con ilustraciones de la revista LIFE, la otra con imágenes documentales de diferentes fuentes.
Make Up Make Down
In her art Sanja Iveković employs photography, video, installation, and performance. She was recognized as a pioneer within video art in former Yugoslavia and was one of the first artists of her generation to focus on feminist questions.
Throughout her career Sanja Iveković has worked with mass media and she frequently contrasts the media image of woman with the private image as represented in her own photo album. She aims by this means to reveal and illuminate how routines in our daily lives are affected by fashion, advertising, and celebrity culture...
The earliest piece in this show is PAPER WOMEN (1976 - 77), a series which consists of photographic illustrations from various women’s magazines, which the artist has in some way altered or damaged. In today`s domination of electronic media in which impalpable images are rapidly and lavishly consumed as never before, the physical attacking that Iveković employs in this series creates a disturbing sense of unease. Faces of women fashion models are distorted, scratched, pierced, cut through...
In the video piece MAKE UP MAKE DOWN (1976 - 78), a sort of inversion in methodology takes place, with the artist applying make- up onto herself, her face “cut out” of the frame of the video image, showing only her plunging neckline and hands in the slowed down, monotonous and repetitive, almost silent action that evokes private erotic game. Once again, the viewer is left in the lurch, challenged to grasp his/her gaze with his/her own (im)possible voice.
Regarded as a politically engaged artist from the beginning of her career, Iveković has devoted herself and her private sphere to challenging views of privacy and the human body in the public domain. As a feminist activist she has participated in many major artistic and cultural projects and has stressed (in Women’s House for instance) the plight of women as victims of violence in their own homes.
In both GEN XX AND WOMEN’S HOUSE (SUNGLASSES) she uses advertisement illustrations as the basis for quite a different type of narrative from the one we normally associate with advertising. The aim of advertising is generally to be positive and attractive, something that seldom holds our attention for long. Iveković refutes totally the effect of such advertising by adding to pictures of famous models the names of forgotten anti-fascist women and relating how they were imprisoned, tortured, and usually executed (GEN XX). A clash thus arises between what the image and the text relate. The same effect is created when she combines advertisements for famous designer’s labels of sunglasses with texts describing the violence to which women have been subjected.
In the 90s,the war in former Yugoslavia influenced Sanja Iveković’s art and in a number of works she reflects on the everyday reality of it. In the video GENERAL ALERT (SOAP OPERA), she reveals in an unexpected manner how the war reached to the very heart of would- be escapist TV. In the middle of a Latin American soap opera, a strip of text would suddenly appear on the screen with the words “General Alert-Zagreb” which means that the TV program was recorded during the actual shelling of Zagreb.
In one of her more recent work FIGURE & GROUND from 2005 - 06 (where she continues her practice of using mass media images) we are confronted by the war in a global perspective. We see documentary pictures of masked men from different military groupings paired with women fashion models which are promoting the clothing styles inspired by war and terrorism.
Sanja Iveković
Sanja Iveković was born in 1949 in Zagreb, Croatia where she graduated The Academy for Fine Arts.Her art production has spanned a range of media such as photography, performance, video, installations and actions in the public domain since the 1970s. She belong to the artistic generation which emerged after ‘68 and was raised in Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia whose post-object art was usually covered by the umbrella term New Art Practice. Iveković’s work is marked by the critical discourse with the politics of images and body. The analysis of identity constructions in media as well as political engagement, solidarity and activism belong to her artistic strategies.
In the Yugoslav/Croatian art scene she was the first woman artist to express a clearly feminist attitude. In 1973 she started to work with video. In the late eighties she was a founder and a member of a number of women’s non-guvernment organizations in Croatia such as Elektra- Women’s Art Centre, The Centre for Women’s Studies, B.a.B.e – the women’s human rights group . Her work from the 1990s deals with the collapse of socialist regimes and the consequences of the triumph of capitalism and the market economy over living conditions, partucularly of women.From 1999 – 2001 she was teaching «Contemporary Women’s Art Practice» at The Center for Women’s Studies.
Her videos were selected for numerous international video festivals (Hague, San Sebastian, Los Angeles, Berlin, Paris, Montreal and others) and she had solo exhibitions and video presentations in the art institutions such as 49th October Salon, Artist-Citizen, Belgrade;Cutting Realities, Gender strategies in Art, Austrian Cultural Forum, New York; The Living Currency (La Monnaie Vivante),Tate Modern,London (2008); Dokumenta 12, Kassel; 3rd Prague Biennial, Prag; Memorial to the Iraq war, ICA, London; 10th International Istanbul Biennial, Istanbul; Gender Battle, Santiago de Compostela; Stalking with Stories – The Pioneers of the Immemorable, Apexart, New York; If I can’t dance, MuHKA, Antverp; Forms of Resistance - Artists and the Desire for Social Change, Van Abbemuseum Eindhoven; WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution, MOCA, Los Angeles; General Alert, Fundacio Antoni Tapies, Gothenburg Konsthall (2007);General Alert, Kölnischer Kunstverein (2006); Public Cuts, Galerija P74, Ljubljana (2006);Open Systems: Rethinking Art c. 1970;Tate Modern, London (2005); Die Regierung, Secession (2005); Women’s House, Palazzo Ferreri, Genoa (2004); documenta 11, Kassel (2002); Personal Cuts NGBK (2002); Galerie im Taxispalais, Innsbruck (2001); After the Wall, Moderna Muset, (1999/2001) and Manifesta 2,Luxembourg (1998).
She has been awarded the grants by the instiutions such as the Canada Council Grant for the Visiting artists (1979, 1982, 1994) and the Arts Link Grant (USA).
