Sanja Ivekovic
General Alert
Selected Works 1974-2006

Sanja Ivekovic is regarded as one of the most important artists of a
“middle” generation. In addition to an extensive retrospective
selection of her work, the exhibition at the Kölnischer Kunstverein
also show her recent works. At first glance the photographs, videos,
objects and performances that Sanja Ivekovic has created since the
mid-seventies seem to follow the laws of a glamorous pop culture. For
instance, in “Double Life” from 1975 Sanja Ivekovic contrasted
conventional icon-like magazine and advertising photos of women with
private pictures of herself, in which the related gesture compels a
comparative and reflexive reading. Inscribing herself as a person and
thus the private into public discourse, in her work Sanja Ivekovic
pursues the question of how the routines of everyday life are
influenced by the dictate of fashion, advertising and the star cult. At
the same time, for the artist the body is always only the body in the
representation – an image surface domin
ated by the gaze. Sanja Ivekovic purposely exposes herself to the male
gaze, emphatically placing the body, sexuality and gender in the
context of the political. In her most recent works she also refers to
the collapse of former Yugoslavia, the ethnic cleansings, the living
conditions of refugees and women’s anti-fascist resistance.