This exhibition is conceived as a rather specific insight into the representations of feminine subjectivity. By bringing together six artists from a region - Serbia (and Montenegro) - that does not belong to the center of the art world, I am invested in showing that their visual formation of femininity corresponds, and sometimes can even regulate our standardized (and standardizing) viewpoint. The insights provided are purposefully made off-center and they are definitely trans-national. The subtitle "Regards from Serbia and Montenegro" should be understood as an ironic intonation of a postcard sent from the place where these six artists live.
In choosing the non-existing geo-political unit - Serbia and Montenegro - two neighboring countries that were once one country (until 2006), now officially separated - I emphasize the arbitrariness of national geo-political definitions. Ironically, the continuing technological and communicational advances in our globalized present do not guarantee equal opportunities for all. Instead of generating a "trans-national community with a shared set of aesthetic and perceptual foundations," the artworld remains structured as a set of multiple hegemonic systems. Off-Center Femininites is purposely planned to coincide with pivotal exhibition Global Feminisms in Brooklyn Museum of Art, the major show which powerfully extends the notion of trans-national notions of feminisms today, showing more than eighty international women artists.
The artists represented here are working within the cultural climate that takes feminism for granted, but, at the same time, this is the generation of artists who can "really make a change." Except Milica Tomic (born in 1960), artists Sinisa Ilic, Ana Nedeljkovic, Tanja Ostojic, Milena Putnik and Nevena Popovic, Jelena Tomasevic, and Sanja Zdrnja belong to my generation (born in the 1970s, and early 1980s).
Off-Center Femininites is not a critical intervention to a much more ambitious exhibition. Rather, it is a little exercise - an étude (in sense of an instructional musical composition) - in criticality of parafeminism, understood in Amelia Jones' terms. Jones provocatively reminding us that a term with the prefix "para," means both "side by side and beyond," indicated a powerful "conceptual model of critique and exploration that is simultaneously parallel to and building on (in the sense of rethinking and pushing the boundaries of, but nor superseding) earlier feminisms."
My goal is to shed light on processes through which artists work to create beautiful representations to show the complex femininity formation - the parafeminist subject - articulated via a multiple and relational feminine subjectivity - whose manifestations are present in this show. I believe that is the place where subversion lies.
WORKS
When asked by a typical lifestyle glossy magazine to be photographed for a cover, Milica Tomic staged a photo of herself with the title Belgrade Remembers (2001) on the Belgrade main street, hanging from a lamppost. The presence of the cleavage and her gaze turned right at the viewer marks the strategy of shifting power from a desirable model to an unbearable revenge of the victim.
Tanja Ostojic recreates Courbet's iconic image L'Origine du monde (2002) by showing the European Union flag on her panties. Thus, she denies the viewer's gaze into her sex, pointing instead to another site of power - the emblematic yellow-star-circle. The artist stages an inherent ambiguity towards Europe - its cultural supremacy and economic power.
Jelena Tomasevic's recent series of paintings Joy of Life (2004-2006) represents male and female figures that hover in a disjointed, post-utopian universe. The figures are not really engaged in any of the activities - they are merely posing as replicas from fashion magazines. Female figures in high heels, dressed in cool urban outfits insinuate ominous actions in which violence is only suggested. They signal the advent of the late capitalist culture of the spectacle-as a represented version of the world, which pushed itself to a dead-end.
The Evil Girl project (2006-2007) by Ana Nedeljkovic is conceived as an intervention into the history of representation of sexuality in the Western art. Ana's (anti)heroine, the Evil Girl, steps into the sphere of representation only to make a mess. Her criticism is always irreverently playful.
Sinisa Ilic's photograph Ministry of Pain (2006) borrows its title from the novel by Croatian author Dubravka Ugresic. It was made as a part of performative piece Actress (Work) in Progress, which deals with problems of economic transition, global capital, migration, and human trafficking.
Sanja Zdrnja's series of photographic self-portraits entitled Tear Objects (2006) includes seven objects (made of polished aluminum) that were derived from the artist's face. The artist took casts of her face, choosing rounded surfaces whose fluid form traces curves of the face. In the action of 'recasting' the objects onto her own face, Sanja puts them on the part of the face which they came from - creating in this way a form that is by its nature contrary to prosthesis.
Never or Next Time (2007), the collaboration between Milena Putnik and Nevena Popovic, thematizes the notion of creative interaction. Their multilayered juxtaposition of figures suggests that new meanings can be reached by the process of active viewing.
