Participants:  Hana Ćurak, Linda Gusia, Elma Hodžić, Vida Knežević, Jovana Mihajlović Trbovc and Vesna Vuković

Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova

The aim of the conference Feminist Positions in Visual Arts in the Region of the Former Yugoslavia, taking place in connection to the exhibition For Your Pleasure, is to place local feminist art into a broader context.

There are thus several instances of early feminist art in Slovenia, all of them equally valid and sharing a determining trait – the realization of articulating gender-based social discrimination as the main theme of the artistic statement or method of artistic work. Like elsewhere in the world, feminist themes in artistic production in Slovenia generally came to the fore only once the demand for the equality of the sexes had been clearly articulated in the broader social sphere. In the Yugoslav context, this happened with the new feminism of the late 1970s (marked by the Comrade Woman conference in Belgrade in 1978), while in Slovenia the new feminist movement formulated the issue of the equality of women and sexual minorities as a political issue during the time of the civil society movements in the 1980s.

The recognition that all women's rights won anywhere in the world have been the result of women's struggle is also true in the field of visual arts. Irrespective of the system in which they emerged, and however long women had to fight for them, women's rights and the discourses associated with them must always be seen as potentially threatened (this is revealed and manifested in the inextricable link between the capitalist mode of production and gender and class discrimination).

The speakers at the conference belong to the middle and younger generation of curators and theorists working on feminism, activism, space, memory and violence, as well as on the merging of the field of art and culture with broader social and political effects.

The conference will be in two parts; the first part will focus on the history of Yugoslav neo-feminism, the embodied experience of women in the narratives used in cinematography, and how (feminist) art can help to bring the complexity of history closer to museum audiences. In the second part, we will problematise the feminist strategies of the late 1970s in the contemporary historical moment, highlighting the issue of unpaid work in the arts, the material situation of women artists, and asking who the 'witches' are today.

The introduction to the conference, which will take place at the Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova, will begin at the Moderna galerija (Museum of Modern Art) with a guided tour of the exhibition For Your Pleasure.

The conference will be held in English and Serbo-Croatian, registration is not required.

Conference brochure (PDF)

PROGRAM 

Moderna galerija (Museum of Modern Art), Cankarjeva 15

10:00 – 11:00 guided tour of the exhibition For Your Pleasure by Martina Vovk, exhibition curator and Kristjan Sedej, curator assistent  

Museum of Contemporary Art  Metelkova, Maistrova 3

12:00– 12:15 welcome by Martina Vovk

12:15 – 12:35 Linda Gusia, We call them heroines – representations of women’s experience during the war in cinematography

12:35 – 12:55 Elma Hodžić, Reimagining history: feminist art as a tool in post-war museum praxis

12:55 – 13:15  Hana Ćurak, Sve su to vještice: Intervening into the patriarchal everyday?

13:15 – 14:00 discussion, moderated by Kristjan Sedej

lunch break

15:00 – 15:20 Jovana Mihajlović Trbovc, Visual art in the history of Yugoslav Neo-Feminism

15:20 – 15:40  Vesna Vuković, Women artists and the institution(s) of art: structural reasons of exclusion

15:40 – 16:00 Vida Knežević, What do we do with the paradox of unpaid (reproductive/care) work – in art and life?

16:00 – 17:00 discussion, moderated by Adela Železnik 

17:00 – 18:00 optional visit of the exhibitions How to Go On? A selection of works from Moderna galerija's Arteast 2000+ and national collections and Aleksandra Vajd: From Within, Down and Above