Wednesday 12 February 2025, 4pm
Online - register via Google Forms.
Contemporary visual and performance artist Marina Marković will be discussing her artistic practice. See her artist statement bellow.
“Body and embodiment are the central motives of my artistic practice. The experience of anorexia in my early adolescence has determined the direction of my artistic action toward body politics, (de)construction of gender and sexuality, the economy of power, and, more importantly – unveiled a network of power relations in which the issues of coercion and free will have become inextricably interwoven.
Over time, my attitude toward the body ranged from objectification to the treatment of body rituals and the connection between physiological/biological/psychological/political experiences, whether those belonged to me directly or indirectly. My basic artistic strategy is to perform various activities that are, within society, designated as women’s in various media – from drawings and tattoos, sewing and embroidery, installations, performances, videos, or larger conceptual units. The longstanding corpo – realism (which Elizabeth Grosz denominates “the state of physical existence”) has allowed me to explore more closely the notions of pleasure and enjoyment (jouissance) within the life of a woman, as well as their connection to the concepts of control, restriction, rejection, punishment, alienation, (dis)obedience, and different forms of social reward.
Through complex relationships of close but socially opposed concepts, I discuss disparate forms of public and intimate forms of subordination and domination. Throughout my artistic practice, I try to unveil various socio-political mechanisms of pressure, that is, the biopolitical imperative imposed on women by the heteropatriarchy, pointing to the extent to which the issues of freedom and coercion for a woman are inseparable.” -Marina Marković
Speaker:
Marina Marković is a visual and performance artist originally from Belgrade, Serbia. Since 2006 she has exhibited extensively at various festivals, art fairs, group and solo exhibitions throughout Serbia, the United States, Great Britain, Japan, Italy, Mexico, and beyond. Marković participated in artist-in-residence programs at ISCP (The International Studio & Curatorial Program) in New York and Q21 MuseumsQuartier in Vienna. She is the recipient of the Young Visual Artist Award and Dimitrije Basicevic Mangelos Award for 2011. and the Vladimir Veličković drawing awards for 2021. Her works are included in various private and public art collections worldwide. In 2022. her work has been added to Secondary Archive, a platform for women artists from Central and Eastern Europe exhibited in Manifesta 14. She is a co-founder of Naked Art Residency, international art-ist-in-residence program in Gola Glava, Serbia and a guest professor at RUFA University, Roma, Italy.
Moderator:
Aleksandra Avgust (Oxford University) is a queer visual artist and writer originally from Belgrade, Serbia. She studied painting and sculpture at Rhode Island School of Design, holds a BA in English and Comparative Literature from Columbia University and is currently working towards her master’s in Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies. Her work focuses on modernist visual cultures, queer relationality and homosocial spaces, aesthetics of androgyny, potentiality of negative affect and subversive modes of embodiment.
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