About the exibition (pdf)<\/a><\/p>\n—<\/p>\n
By using the term COOPERATIONS (in plural) as the title of this exhibition, we carry on a convention instituted either by the artist herself or the curators of her larger solo shows and retrospectives. Namely, her exhibitions are mostly entitled after one of her own works, like, for instance, Personal Cuts (Galerie am Taxispalais, Innsbruck, 2001), General Alert (K\u00f6lnischer Kunstverein, Cologne, 2006, itinerary exhibition), Trening czyni mistrza \/ Practice Makes the Master (Muzeum Sztuki, \u0141\u00f3d\u017a, 2009), Sweet Violence (MoMA, New York, 2011\/2012), Waiting for the Revolution (MUDAM, Luxemburg 2012) and more recently, Pearls of Revolution (Luka, Mul and Anex Galleries, Pula, Croatia, 2016). This may suggest that she, as an artist, is very good at titles (not all artists have that skill) since indeed her titles are never vague or meaningless: they are direct, precise and simple.<\/p>\n
The title COOPERATIONS, however, does not come from any of the works that she has signed as a visual artist. Instead, it tries to refresh the memory of her feminist activism. Back in 2000, Sanja Ivekovi\u0107, an artist-citizen and public intellectual who was then the founder of the NGO organization Electra in Zagreb, initiated and organized an international event entitled Co-operation: The International Forum for Feminist Theory and Art Practice. In September of that year, she invited us to Dubrovnik, some thirty professional women \u2013 visual artists, art critics, curators and theorists, all art workers from Eastern or Western Europe as well as from the USA. In contrast to her own artworks which have a visual presence and therefore can be exposed to reproducibility (in catalogues and other publications), this event, in which Ivekovi\u0107 worked not as a project leader but as cooperator, bypassed any visual representation. The conference was activism-in-practice, an exchange of experiences we had gathered in work and in life. It was held in an atmosphere of solidarity, establishing a politics of friendship among women, which, since the 1970s, lies at the core of Ivekovi\u0107\u2019s feminist worldview.<\/p>\n
Currently, at P74 Gallery, the exhibition COOPERATIONS presents three collaborative initiatives, each of which emerged from Ivekovi\u0107\u2019s cooperation with a number of working women. Two of these take the form of artworks while one is a collaborative project that relates to a specific artwork of Ivekovi\u0107. In all cases, the collaborations concern major social issues running throughout Ivekovi\u0107\u2019s thought and practice: antifascism, restrictions imposed on women by nationalist ideologies, and the representation of women\u2019s labor. In addition, they reflect her lifelong engagement with the technique of collage\/montage.
\nThe first is Art of the Possible: Towards an International Antifascist Feminist Front, intended as an aural, activist intervention in urban space and developed collaboratively as a response to Ivekovi\u0107\u2019s public work Monument to Revolution, produced in Athens for Documenta 14 (2017). A work-in-progress, the monument is a re-enactment of Mies van der Rohe\u2019s Monument to Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, which was also known as Monument to Revolution (1927\u20131932\/35). In Athens, Ivekovi\u0107\u2019s own Monument to Revolution was partly reconstituted with locally produced materials: bricks recycled from the districts of Omonoia, Monastiraki, Syntagma, Lipasmata and the port of Piraeus. Addressing the complex politics of Monument to Revolution, Art of the Possible was an initiative of art theorists and writers Angela Dimitrakaki and Antonia Maja\u010da in collaboration with Sanja Ivekovi\u0107, \u2013 engaging, that is, three women who have been practicing their politics of friendship. Art of the Possible brought together the voices of about thirty female activists, artists, poets, theorists or collectives who were asked to provide short recorded statements on the possibility of, and need for, an antifascist feminist front across and beyond borders. This sound-based, multilingual, cooperative intervention could be heard in the vicinity of Monument to Revolution set in Avdi Square in central Athens.<\/p>\n
The second work, Women\u2019s House (The Sunglasses), is a series of poster size images which belong to Ivekovi\u0107\u2019s long-term project Women\u2019s House, initiated in 1998. It was based on the cooperation she established with women\u2019s centers in many countries sheltering women subjected to domestic violence. The same issue is at work in her photo-series produced between 2002 and 2004 and titled Women\u2019s House (The Sunglasses), which also focused on domestic violence against women. She again opted for the procedure of collage\/montage, using fashion ads for sunglasses that she confiscated from women\u2019s journals, onto which she inserted statements by women who speak about abuse.<\/p>\n
In Women\u2019s House (The Sunglasses), shown in this exhibition, the focus has shifted from domestic violence to state violence against women\u2019s rights \u2013 in this case, women\u2019s right to decide about and plan motherhood, including the right to terminate a pregnancy. Even if in a state such as Poland abortion is severely restricted (effectively banned) explicitly by law, the anti-abortion \u201ccondition\u201d as manifest in Pro-Life movements exists in many countries. The nationalist ideologies which haunt not only Europe require aggressively a \u201cbigger\u201d nation, which necessitates the \u201cnationalization of women\u2019s wombs\u201d. In the series, Ivekovi\u0107 presents statements by women from Poland, Turkey, Italy, Croatia, who (hidden behind black sunglasses) talk about the reasons for terminating their pregnancies.<\/p>\n
Addressing women\u2019s manual labor, The Invisible Women of Erste Campus (2016) is the third piece on show. In its original setting, the series of videos is permanently installed in various locations across the office premises of the new Erste Campus building in Vienna. Each video presents a woman worker who performs \u201cinvisible\u201d labor (night cleaners, women working in the cafeteria). These service economy laborers are also immigrant workers. They relay their migrant experiences and recite poems of their choice written by Croatian poet and activist Aida Bagi\u0107. In Ljubljana, this work will be presented as a single-screen installation.<\/p>\n
Cooperators: Sanja Ivekovi\u0107 and Bojana Peji\u0107<\/p>\n
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\u2018The Art of the Possible\u2019 Towards an International Antifascist Feminist Front<\/strong> initiated by art theorists and writers Angela Dimitrakaki and Antonia Maja\u010da in cooperation with Sanja Ivekovi\u0107<\/em>. Contributors include: Mujeres P\u00fablicas (activist art collective, Argentina), Elke Krasny (art theorist, Austria), Jaleh Mansoor (art historian, Canada), Cecilia Vicu\u00f1a (artist, poet, Chile), Vesna Kesi\u0107 (activist and writer, Croatia), Frederikke Hansen and Tone Olaf Nielsen (CAMP founders, Denmark), Mare Tralla (artist and activist, Estonia\/UK), Arahmaiani (artist and activist, Indonesia), Giovanna Zapperi (art historian, Italy\/France), Isabell Lorey (political theorist, Germany), Athena Athanasiou (social theorist, Greece), Phoebe Giannisi (poet, Greece), To Mov\/The Purple (feminist collective, Greece), The Organization of United African Women (Migrant Women Association, Greece), Larissa Vergou (actress and elected councilor of Athens Municipality, Greece), Universal Jenny (poet, Greece), Dilar Dirik (writer and activist, Kurdish Women\u2019s Movement), Sylvia Marcos (writer and activist, Mexico), Syreny. tv, Ewa Majewska & Aleka Polis (feminist network, Poland), Ana Teixeira Pinto with Alex Martinis Roe (writer and artist, Portugal\/Australia\/Germany), G\u00fcls\u00fcn Karamustafa (artist, Turkey), Esther Leslie (political and cultural theorist, UK), International Women\u2019s Strike (USA), The National Women\u2019s Liberation (USA), Kristine Stiles (art historian, USA), Martha Wilson (artist, USA), Bojana Peji\u0107 (art historian, Serbia), Shubigi Rao (artist and writer, Singapore), Nuria Enguita Mayo (art historian, Spain), Le Zbor (Feminist Choir, Zagreb), Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA). The sound file was compiled by the feminist electronic musician and performer AGF (Germany\/Finland). Invisible Women of Erste Campus <\/strong> initiated by Sanja Ivekovi\u0107 in cooperation with the cleaning ladies<\/em>: Rodika Gutman, Carmen Krestan, Danijla Milatinovic, Ana Brunsean, Ana-Maria Pitu, Begzada Hasanovi\u0107, Katherina Jackowska, Mikka Ze\u010devi\u0107, Viorica Konradi, Angela Mutu, Laura Jasarevi\u0107, Elfete Hachioj, Refija Fejzic, Mevlida Jahi\u0107, Vesna Sudakovi\u0107, Ramizja Osmani, Mariana Andronig, Halida Balta, Dzevida Abdurahmanovi\u0107. Sunglasses (Women\u2019s House)<\/strong> initiated by Sanja Ivekovi\u0107 in cooperation with<\/em>: Mihaela, Kristina, Ana, Marica (Autonomous Women\u2019s House, Zagreb); Sonia, Veronica, Mercedes (UDI-Transitional Living Centre against violence, Genoa); Canan, Burcu, Yasemin, (Mor Cati: Women\u2019s Shelter, Istambul), Magda, Violeta, Agnieszka (Polish Federation for Women and Family), Marie (Fraenhous, Luxembourg), Dolores (Dru\u0161tvo za nenasilno komunikacijo, Ljubljana).<\/p>\n—<\/p>\n
The project was supported by: The Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia and The Municipality of Ljubljana<\/p>\n
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Photo: Foto: Dejan Habicht<\/p>\n\n\t\t