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Sanja Iveković: Sweet Violence
December 18, 2011–March 26, 2012
MEMBER PREVIEWS ON NOW Special Exhibitions Gallery, third floor
The Donald B. and Catherine C. Marron Atrium, second floor
The first museum exhibition in the United States of the work of Sanja Iveković (b. 1949, Zagreb) covers four decades of the artist's remarkable career. A feminist, activist, and video pioneer, Iveković came of age in the post-1968 period, when artists broke free from mainstream institutional settings, laying the ground for a form of praxis antipodal to official art. Part of the generation known as the Nova Umjetnička Praksa (New Art Practice), Iveković produced works of cross-cultural resonance that range from conceptual photomontages to video and performance.
This exhibition brings together a historic group of single-channel videos and media installations, including Sweet Violence (1974), Personal Cuts (1982), Practice Makes a Master (1982/2009), General Alert (Soap Opera) (1995), and Rohrbach Living Memorial (2005). Among the 100 photomontages featured in the exhibition is Iveković's celebrated series Double Life (1975–76), for which the artist juxtaposed pictures of herself culled from her private albums with commercial ads clipped from the pages of women's magazines.
While in the 1970s Iveković probed the persuasive qualities of mass media and its identity-forging potential, after 1990—following the fall of the Berlin Wall, the disintegration of Yugoslavia, and the birth of a new nation—she focused on the transformation of reality from socialist to post-socialist political systems. Iveković offers a fascinating view into the official politics of power, gender roles, and the paradoxes inherent in society's collective memory. The exhibition will be accompanied by a major publication.
This exhibition brings together a historic group of single-channel videos and media installations, including Sweet Violence (1974), Personal Cuts (1982), Practice Makes a Master (1982/2009), General Alert (Soap Opera) (1995), and Rohrbach Living Memorial (2005). Among the 100 photomontages featured in the exhibition is Iveković's celebrated series Double Life (1975–76), for which the artist juxtaposed pictures of herself culled from her private albums with commercial ads clipped from the pages of women's magazines.
While in the 1970s Iveković probed the persuasive qualities of mass media and its identity-forging potential, after 1990—following the fall of the Berlin Wall, the disintegration of Yugoslavia, and the birth of a new nation—she focused on the transformation of reality from socialist to post-socialist political systems. Iveković offers a fascinating view into the official politics of power, gender roles, and the paradoxes inherent in society's collective memory. The exhibition will be accompanied by a major publication.
Organized by Roxana Marcoci, Curator, Department of Photography.
The exhibition is made possible by MoMA’s Wallis Annenberg Fund for Innovation in Contemporary Art through the Annenberg Foundation.
Major support is provided by The Modern Women’s Fund and by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.
Additional funding is provided by David Teiger, The International Council of The Museum of Modern Art, Trust for Mutual Understanding, and The Junior Associates of The Museum of Modern Art.
Related Events
Upcoming
Past
Sanja Iveković: Sweet Violence
A panel discussion on feminism, art, and politics with artist Sanja Iveković and Ivana Bago and Antonia Majaca, curators, Institute for Duration, Location, and Variables (DeLVe), Charles Esche, director, Van Abbemuseum, art historian and curator Bojana Pejić, and video, installation, and performance artist Martha Rosler. Roxana Marcoci, curator, Department of Photography, and organizer of the exhibition, will moderate.
The panel will be followed by Iveković's performance Practice Makes a Master, featuring Sonja Pregrad. Separate tickets are required for the performance and can be obtained free of charge starting November 12 at the lobby information desk, at the film desk, or online.
Practice Makes a Master
Sanja Iveković first performed Practice Makes a Master in 1982 at Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin. The video documenting that performance shows the artist in a black evening dress on a stage, her head hooded by a white plastic bag. Her body suddenly jolts violently, and she falls to the ground. She lies immobile for several seconds and then gets up. A few seconds later she falters, falls again, and lies on the stage with legs outstretched. She stands and falls and repeats these actions over and over again. A spotlight switches on and off with a regular rhythm. All the while a sensual tune sung by Marilyn Monroe, from the sound track of the movie Bus Stop (1956), is progressively slowed until the female voice starts to sound like a man's. The score is disrupted by the jarring clamor of guns and other machines from video games, recorded by the artist in New York the previous year. Practice Makes a Master is a compelling study of the rehearsal of violence and psychological savagery. In 2009 Iveković asked dancer Sonja Pregrad to reenact Practice Makes a Master at the Akademie der Künste, Berlin, and at BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht. Performed again in conjunction with the exhibition at MoMA, this contemporary restaging brings to mind the images of aggression that have followed in the wake of the September 11 attacks, among other episodes of recent violence around the world.
Sanja Iveković. Lady Rosa of Luxembourg. 2001. Installation view (2011), The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Photo: Jonathan Muzikar. © 2011 MoMA, NY
Related Publication
Sanja Iveković: Sweet Violence
Roxana Marcoci and Terry Eagleton
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