Sanja Iveković. General Alert. Works 1974-2007

Sanja Iveković (Zagreb, 1949) has figured largely in the creation of innovative artistic concepts since the 1970s. A pioneer in her own country, whether in the field of videoart or in the critical conception of gender politics – in contrast to geometrical abstraction and other tendencies then in vogue in the former Yugoslavia – she remains a key artist to this day.

Her works come from a deep awareness that representation often determines notions of identity where the apparent and the real are part of complex processes. From the confrontation between elements of everyday life, fashion and advertising images, to the problematisation of body politics, self-presentation is essential for Iveković, and it is by portraying the influences and parallels between ’private’ life and ’public’ sphere in the media, that she has managed to blur the distinctions and show the ambiguity of predominant public concepts.

Since the 1990s, and in reaction to events in the former Yugoslavia, some of Iveković’s works have come as a result of her own personal commitment to social issues, such as gender violence, although her activism now appears more as an attitude prior to the predominance of formalisation. However, Iveković has never abandoned her commitment to showing the tensions and confluences between the private and autobiographical and the problematics of public life related to glamour, spectacle or social conflicts. Through such expressive media as performance, conceptual photography, video and installation, as well as postcards, albums and posters, she has managed to re-enter aesthetic and ideological contemporary debates in an unprecedented manner.