Sanja Iveković. Practice Makes the Master

ms, 36 Więckowskiego St.

Sanja Iveković (b. 1949) is an unrivalled master in dealing with serious subjects. The titles of her recent exhibitions, General Alarm and Urgent Matters, reach to the core of current problems with language. Immediately they seem to draw attention to pressing issues, alarming to one’s neighbours and fellow citizens. The artist’s oeuvre can be read as an unusual report on the state of society; launched in the 1970s, it is a subjective record of the transformation of reality in two political systems, being at the same time an intimate diary, alive with references to the surrounding world.

Iveković followed the dismantling of the social and political reality of Yugoslavia and the birth of a new nation and language. Through working with language in its semantic and structural space, Iveković struggles to preserve the inalienable right of each subject: the right to possess one’s own opinion and to be able to formulate one’s own “final vocabulary” – the language of each individual “a set of words which they employ to justify their actions, their beliefs and their lives“ (R.Rorty). Since 70’s Iveković uses different formal systems to return subjectivity to those who have lost it. She presents both herself and other nameless subjects with that possibility by creating a frame or “stage“ within her art in which they again become visible and where their inalienable rights are reintroduced to them.

The point of departure for the artist’s solo exhibition in the Muzum Sztuki in Łódź, the first major presentatin of her works in Poland, is an attempt to examine Iveković works as a report, document or diary, where the relation between textual and visual discourses is of crucial importance. The show brings together a selection of works made from 1974–2007 as well as the project Women’s House (Sunglasses), which appears in a number of Polish cities in the form of a poster.

Curator: Magdalena Ziółkowska

The exhibition is accompanied by a bilingual catalogue (PL, EN) including texts by Bojana Pejić, Tom Holert and a conversation with the artist, co-published by Ha!Art Foundation.

The project Women’s House (Sunglasses) (2009) is a collaboration with Federacja na Rzecz Kobiet and Planowania Rodziny.

Sanja Ivekovic. Practice Makes the Master
Kurator: Magdalena Ziolkowska