Invisible Tissue

Curator: Amra Ćebić

The works of the Zvono Award finalists, Irma Beširević, Milica Bilanović, Pavle Golijanin, and Milena Ivić, are significant indicators of social conditions brought to light through the artistic practices of young artists. Although seemingly disparate, their thematically and medially diverse works and practices converge in the realm of social sensitivity, addressing political, systemic, and traditional categories, as well as contemporary issues of the post-digital human. Just as tissue, in a biological sense, represents a group of similar cells with a common origin, the award finalists gather around shared characteristics of a capitalist society, whose problems often remain invisible, with art opening the door to dialogue.

The Zvono Award winner, Milena Ivić, has focused her practice on exploring various paradoxes of institutional systems and human rights, viewed through the lens of feminism and social classes. Her work Letters to Irena is realized through an intervention in public space and a performative act by the audience in the gallery, aiming to raise societal awareness about the issue of unsystematic responses to violence against women. With a neon sign reading “Draga Irena” in public spaces, she initiates communication with passersby, while in the gallery, she provides the audience with the opportunity to connect with Irena – a victim of violence who killed her husband – through letters. Guided by empathy, the artist demonstrates an act of solidarity with Irena and emphasizes the importance of confronting collective and societal responsibility.

Equally critical of institutionalization in a societal context is Milica Bilanović. Through her multi-year artistic intervention, she redefines the perception of post-Yugoslav industrial heritage – abandoned and overgrown with vegetation – which serves as a reminder of the era of workers’ prosperity and the collapse of socialist ideals. The artist transplants plants from industrial complexes in Tuzla, Belgrade, Čačak, and Bihać into the gallery space, allowing them to grow in a new environment free from issues of bankruptcy, debts, and ownership, while also resisting the erasure of collective memory regarding historical facts. Her work Industrial Plants takes on a transformative role as the artist relocates self-grown plants from the Kombiteks complex to the KRAK Center, enabling them to thrive in a reborn space with a new societal role. 

The exhibition shifts from public spaces to a more personal and intimate discourse on heritage, accompanied by a family story and the transgenerational transmission of values, while remaining within the framework of the reactivating role of objects and their connection to labor. Pavle Golijanin exhibits an object – a bakery oven, handmade in his father’s family workshop. He achieves narrativity through artistic documentation (photographs and videos) and visual art objects created in the same workshop. The artist connects the craft and creative process with the transfer of knowledge, skills, and rituals, which are key elements of family identity in a time when traditional values are being lost under the pressure of consumerism.

Drawing on a critique of capitalist society, Irma Beširević, through a photographic installation and video work, addresses the issues of addiction to digital technologies and imposed behavioral patterns directed by the creators of virtual platforms. The artist explores the extent to which manipulation is present in society through exploited digital systems. Such models of behavior evolve into systems of surveillance, trapping people in an imagined panopticon where they unknowingly become constantly observed and controlled, with an illusion of freedom and choice.

The artistic approaches and practices showcased in the exhibition question various responses to a set of insufficiently visible problems and current social issues, bringing them into the sphere of the visible, open, and public, thanks to art’s ability to spark endless discussions.

The exhibition is realized with the support of Residency Unlimited and the Trust for Mutual Understanding from New York.

Video about last year’s exhibition Zvono 2024 is available here.