Sanja Iveković: Works of Heart (1970–2023)

Works of Heart (1970–2023) is the first major retrospective of one of the most important Croatian artists, Sanja Iveković, in her homeland. Over the past fifty years, in both socialist Yugoslavia and the contemporary global-capitalist reality, Sanja Iveković’s practice has evolved through a feminist articulation of various engaged positions towards the socio-political context. The heart in the title of this project is a metaphor that foregrounds the artist’s engaged position and presents the exhibition as a space of different encounters, which derive from themes explored in Iveković’s work.

One part of the exhibition, entitled Meeting Points: Documents in the Making, 1968–1982, is conceived as an archive in which the Museum of Contemporary Art is itself presented as a space of encounter between the institution and its public, art and society, and between different generations, as well as a place whose institutional history overlaps with the history of Sanja Iveković’s artistic practice. The archive explores Iveković’s early work and her first big solo show, Documents 1949–1976, presented in 1976 at the City Gallery of Contemporary Art, the precursor to the present-day Museum.

The metaphorical heart in the exhibition’s title also reminds us that our society needs more solidarity at a time when one crisis follows another. The exhibition places special emphasis on works in which art is actively involved in current social and political struggles, as well as in preserving the memory of the emancipation struggles of the past. A characteristic merging of the artist’s feminist engagement and her critical intervention into the politics of memory is evident in one of the new works produced for the exhibition, Pregnant Memory. It is conceived as the Zagreb version of Iveković’s landmark work Lady Rosa of Luxembourg (2001) and dedicated to women’s contribution to the anti-fascist struggle.

Sanja Iveković
Born in 1949 in Zagreb. She graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb in 1970, when she began to exhibit her artwork. Iveković has exhibited her work at many national and international shows (Paris Biennale, Sao Paolo Biennale, Manifesta, Documenta, Liverpool Biennale, Istanbul Biennale, Prague Biennale and others), and her video works and video installations have been shown at numerous international video festivals (Ljubljana, Berlin, Geneva, Paris, Montreal, Los Angeles, Locarno, Tokyo, the Hague, Osnabrück, Bonn, Dessau, etc). In 1979, 1990 and 1994, she won the Canadian government fellowship for visiting foreign artists, and in 1994 she received the American Arts Link Fellowship. In 2005 and 2006, Iveković resided in Berlin as a German government fellowship (DAAD) recipient. She had retrospective exhibitions at Galerie am Taxispalais, Innsbruck (2001), nGbK, Berlin (2001), Kölnischer Kunstverein, Cologne (2006), Göteborgs Konsthall, Göteborg (2006), Fundació Antoni Tàpies, Barcelona (2007). Her works are in the collections of many museums including: MOMA, New York; Musée National d’art Modern Centre Pompidou, Paris; Contemporary Art Museum, Kumamoto; Generali Foundation, Vienna; Tate Modern, London. In addition to creating art, Iveković also engages in female activism and is a founder and member of several women’s NGOs in Croatia.

Works of Heart (1970–2023)
Retrospective
Curator: Zdenka Badovinac
Coordinator: Martina Munivrana
Curatorial and Production Assistant: Petra Cegur
Exhibition architecture: Ana Martina Bakić
Visual identity, catalogue design and graphic design: Rafaela Dražić

Meeting Points: Documents in the Making, 1968-1982
Archive
Curator: Ivana Bago
Curatorial and Production Assistant: Renata Filčić
Exhibition architecture: Zbyněk Baladrán
Graphic design: Sanja Kuzmanović

Production: Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb

The exhibition has been realized in partnership with Kunsthalle Vienna and supported by the City of Zagreb and the Ministry of Culture and Media of Croatia.

Sponsors of the exhibition: Stratkom, TZGZ, Erste, Jutarnji list, INA