Join us on Wednesday, November 29th, at 7 pm for the audio-visual installation Nave, Nartex, Navel of Nina Zeljković, a resident at the Iatrus Residency Program. На 29 ноември (сряда), в 19:00 ч. ви каним на аудио-визуалната инсталция Nave Nartex Navel на визуалния артист Нина Зелкович.
In her recent conceptual painting and video practice, Nina Zeljković investigates topics and constellations in the intersection of painting and embodiment. This is a field where painting is marked less by the logic of the gaze (or principles of opticality, more generally) than by the proximity of a body. A distinctive and continuous undercurrent in the history of painting, this field extends from the very beginnings – Neandertal and early human hand stencil cave paintings at sites like the Cave of Maltravieso in Cáceres, Spain (up to avant-garde action and performative painting in the 20th century,
In field trips that took her from Belgrade all the way through southern Turkey to the Syrian border and Mount Ararat, the artist looked at painting in the context of early Christian and Orthodox monastery and church architecture.
Zeljković’s video work Nave, Nartex, Navel, combining visual materials from various sites of her research trip including the Cappadocia region, thus quite logically does not focus on showing those paintings. Instead it pursues a reembodiment of the monks who once lived amongst them. It does so, however, purely by capturing their view from their caves out into the ambient landscape: It represents their body not by depicting it, making it visible, just through the presentification of its gaze.
Nina Zeljković* (1985, Belgrade, Serbia) lives and works between Germany and Serbia. She completed her MFA at the University of Fine Arts Hamburg in the class of Jutta Koether. More info about her art work: www.ninazeljkovic.com
* Nina Zeljković’s participation at Iatrus residency program is kindly supported with scholarship by Serbian contemporary art collector and chemistry professor Nenad M. Kostić.