Courtesy G Fine Art.
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Opening Reception: Saturday, September 13 from 6pm to 8pm
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The exhibition runs September 13- October 18, 2014.
In this exhibition, Vesna Pavlović continues to explore the archive of images of the Museum of Yugoslav History in Belgrade, Serbia. The archive is the visual record of Yugoslav president Josip Broz Tito’s career and his travels around former Yugoslavia and the world. It represents a psychological portrait of an era, burdened with photographic representation of socialist propaganda. The project examines the role of spectacle in state ideology through the lens of photographic representation. Personal and individual experience is juxtaposed with the collective representations of the national unity. The tension between the archive’s private intention and its public display is central to the character of the archive’s photographic and historical representation.
The central piece of the installation is the film of a performance, which took part in 1979, on the occasion of Josip Broz Tito’s birthday. Here the author has participated in a choreographed spectacle as a designated Tito’s pioneer. Photographs of the archive itself are combined with projected images onto the grey fabric. The use of fabric serves as a symbolic representation of the “ideological curtain” often used as a backdrop for communist party meetings.
Vesna Pavlović’s photographic projects examine visual representations of social groups and explore technological and material aspects of photographic media. Expanding the photographic image beyond its frame, traditional format, and the narrative is central to her artistic strategies. Recently she built on these themes to examine photographic representation of specific political and cultural histories. These representations include photographic archives and related artifacts. Pavlović’s installation “Illuminated Archive”, is on view through September 28th at the Phillips Collection in Washington DC. Using documentary materials from the Phillips’s library and archives, Vesna Pavlović explored the museum’s history of exhibition and display.
Vesna Pavlović (Serbia/US) obtained her MFA degree in Visual Arts from Columbia University in 2007. She is an Assistant Professor of Art at Vanderbilt University where she teaches photography and digital media. She has exhibited widely, including solo shows at the Phillips Collection in Washington DC, Frist Center for the Visual Arts in Nashville, Museum of History of Yugoslavia in Belgrade, Centro de la Memoria Haroldo Conti, in Buenos Aires, and the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento. She has been featured with a solo presentation at the Untitled, 12th Istanbul Biennial, 2011, and in group exhibitions in the Paço das Artes in São Paulo, Brazil, Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, Bucharest Biennale 5, Romania, Le Quartier Center for Contemporary Art in Quimper, France, NGBK in Berlin, Germany, Museum of Contemporary Art in Belgrade, Serbia, Photographers’ Gallery in London, Kettle’s Yard in Cambridge, UK, and FRAC Center for Contemporary Art in Dunkerque, France. Pavlović has been awarded grants from the Art Matters Foundation, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, and CEC ArtsLink. She is the recipient of the Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities Fellowship at Vanderbilt University in 2010. Her work is included in major private and public art collections, Art in Embassies, the Phillips Collection and Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, in Washington DC, and Museum of Contemporary Art, Belgrade, Serbia, among others.
Gallery Hours:
- Thursday – Saturday: Noon – 5pm and by appointment.
G Fine Art Gallery is located at 4718 14th Street NW. For more information visit www.gfineartdc.com, call 202-462-1601, or email info@gfineartdc.com.
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