Feminism in art of artists born on or after 1970
BILJANA BOSNJAKOVIC
This is a still image taken from my video Woman, filmed on the Cliffs of Moher in Ireland. To me, as a human being, this disturbing image reflects fear and terror. As a woman it causes anger and disappointment. During the shooting of Woman, I wanted to transmit a feeling of defeat, despair and humiliation. I shrouded the face of the figure to represent numerous faceless victims, a sense of shame, danger, of abuse and death. Her body is naked. It is stripped, exposed, rendered passive and unopposing. Her hands are behind her back and bound, to convey the meaning of impotence and condemnation, of being used, hurt, forced, raped, tortured, killed, everywhere in the past and somewhere still today, for the simple fact of being a woman. The background of the scene is metaphorical: I found these fascinating and inhospitable cliffs perfect to describe the world that surrounds a woman. This work was inspired by events and experiences which have altered my perception of the world. A world that inflicts by violence and is dominated by a lack of respect for women.
Biljana Bosnjakovic, Italy 2011
Born in Uzice, Serbia, in 1970, Biljana Bosnjakovic moved to Rome in 1992 and has lived and worked in Verona since 2002. An extremely versatile artist, Biljana continuously experiments with a variety of techniques to express her concerns and torments and without ever dwelling on a single medium. She moves from photography to performance art, from sculpture to video art, where she coordinates, curates and creates every single achievement.Among the many different mediums that Biljana uses, the video camera is one that is most suitable for her, without the use of tripods or other supports and it becomes almost like an extension of her body. Despite this, the term video artist is too restrictive to Biljana, as her videos are just the starting points of a larger creative process. Her innovative approach is to use and insert fragments of motion pictures into different structures.
One example of this original idea is a LED screen projection within a traditional framework, where the artist has challenged the idea of static immobility, creating real tableaux vivants.
With the same procedure she has produced a set of "dynamic" furniture animated by videos, as in the case of Carpet-Vision - a design of a combined carpet /table where the table top "lives" by a big LED screen. This project, created in collaboration with the architect Roberto Nicolis, was presented in Verona in autumn 2010 during the Urban Limits exhibition.In other cases, the process was the opposite, where she left the dynamism of video and returned to the "frozen moment" of photography, developing a single video frame through professional printing.In the development of her works, Biljana often focuses attention on her own body and has created multimedia installations and live performances that interact with the audience. These include:
- Video Mutation, screened in 2007 at the Aula Magna of the University of Verona,
- Video Thus Spoke Palladio commissioned in 2008 with the support of CISA Andrea Palladio from Vicenza,
- Video installation Zodiac for Stockhausen in 2009, with the Verona Philharmonic Orchestra at the Camploy Theatre in Verona,
- Solo performance The Vitruvian Woman in 2009, at Okidoki Art Gallery in Berlin,
- Theatrical performance Prekid at Verona Art Fair 2010 for the Angel Art Gallery from Milan and the Cell63 Art Gallery from Berlin.
The next steps in her research have been recently shifting to the observation of the influence of weather and natural elements on her art, which is executed and performed in open spaces. What she intends to do is to allow the environment to intervene with every step of the evolution of her works. It is as though she feels the need to fuse and merge with Nature, in an effort to return to - as well as the search for - the Self.
Jannifer Karch Verze Verona 2011
more info:
www.biljanab.com
www.myspace.com/biljana_b/
www.myspace.com/biljana_bosnjakovic
www.facebook.com/biljana.bosnjakovic
