Tanja Ostojić 

Mis(s)placed Women?

2009-2021

Collaborative Art Project

Artist/Author: Tanja Ostojić

Curator: Dejan Vasić

Curatorial Assistance: Katarina Kostandinović and Tanja Ostojić

Venues and Dates:

Podroom Gallery, Cultural Centre of Belgrade, KCB (Trg republike 5, -1, Belgrade)

Tanja Ostojić: Mis(s)placed Women? 2009-2021, exhibition

Oct 14 – Nov 18, 2021

New Gallery of Visual Arts, NGVU (Kralja Milutina 49, Belgrade)

Tanja Ostojić: Mis(s)placed Women? 2009-2021, exhibition

Oct 15 – Nov 18, 2021 – 19h

Center for Cultural Decontamination, CZKD (Birčaninova 21, Belgrade)

Mis(s)placed Women?  Performance Weekend and the Community Gathering

Oct 16 – 17, 2021

Mis(s)placed Women? is an ongoing collaborative art project started in 2009, consisting of performances and performance art workshops, including contributions by over 160 individuals. Many of them are artists, mainly identifying themselves as women from diverse backgrounds. Within this project, we embody and enact some of everyday-life’s activities that thematize displacement, known to migrants, refugees, and the itinerant artists traveling the world to earn their living. Those performances deal with migration issues, power relations and vulnerability, particularly concerning the female and transgender bodies, an aspect that figured prominently in my art practice. With this project, on one side, we are investigating privilege by making a distinction between working mobility, forced or desired migration, and how arbitrary laws may apply, and on the other side, exploring diverse public spaces and the invisibility of certain groups within them. In the frame of this project, in which I apply feminist emancipatory methodologies of artistic and community practices, I conducted numerous workshops globally where the participants are selected by open call. Individual and group artworks and interventions are developed and produced in this frame. The development of collaboration within the group and forming of a community are very precious processes as well as the further communication with a wide audience that we meet on the streets, and targeted audiences in the venues where presentations, exhibitions and discussions take place.  (T. Ostojić)

Tanja Ostojić is exhibiting photos, stories, videos, sound, drawings, signs and performance scores from the very rich “MIS(S)PLACED WOMEN?” participatory art project archives in the form of a multimedia installation, including works from the collection of the MSUV, Museum of Contemporary Art Vojvodina in two exhibition venues, live interventions in the public spaces in Belgrade and community gathering that will be presented at CZKD.

Mis(s)placed Women? community members whose contributions and artworks are presented in the Mis(s)placed Women? 2009-2021 exhibition include: Teresa Albor, Nela Antonović, Helen Averley, Gaby Bila-Günther, Dagmara Bilon, Ines Borovac, Mia Bradić, Amy Bryzgel, David Caines, Nati Canto, Anaïs Clercx, Azad Colemêrg, Culture Hub Croatia, Luciana Damiani, Alix Denambride, Emma Edvige Ungaro, Li Fu, Hieu Hanh Hoang Tran, Robyn Hambrook, Kwestan Jamal Bawan, Monika Janulevičiūtė, Marija Jevtić, Lissette Nicole Josseau, Jane Kay Park, Mad Kate, Elena Marchevska, Valentina Medda, Susan Merrick, Kim Mc Cafferty, Ashley McNaughton, Branko Milisković, Marta Nitecka Barche, Tanja Ostojić, Sigrid Pawelke, Darija Radaković, Rhea Ramjohn, Alejandra Robles Sosa, Kirsty Russell, Evdoxia Stafylaraki, Suncica Šido, Tan Tan, Cherry Truluck, Tanya Ury, Katja Vaghi, Patricia Verity, Wai Wai, Anastasio William, Hyla Willis, Jiachen Xu. 

In the CZKD, during the performance weekend, the most active local and international Misplaced Women? community members would meet, exchange ideas and thoughts, perform together and will be present at the exhibition openings. Community gathering working group: Tanja Ostojić, Teresa Albor, Lidija Antonović, Nela Antonović, Dagmara Bilon, Mia Bradić,  Ines Borovec, Paula Chambers, Jia Chen Xu, Jelena Dinić, Hieu Hanh Hoang Tran, LADY GABY,  Mad Kate, Susan Merrick, Alexandra Tatar, Bojana Videkanić, Sunčica Šido, Katarina Kostandinović and Dejan Vasić.

Tanja Ostojić (born 1972 in Yugoslavia) is an interdisciplinary and performance artist from Belgrade who has lived and worked in Berlin since 2003. She is internationally known as a pioneer of institutional gender critique and for her work in the field of socially and politically engaged feminist art and art in public space. Her artworks have a high level of theoretical reference and have been analyzed and included in numerous books, journals and anthologies. Ostojić studied sculpture at the University of the Arts Belgrade, Serbia (B.A 1995, MA 1998), visual arts at the École Regionale des Beaux-Arts Nantes, France (1998-99) and received Albert Einstein Research Fellowship for Interdisciplinary Research at the Graduate School for the Arts and Sciences at the Berlin’s University of the Arts (2012-14).

Since 1994, Ostojić has worked as an independent artist and in the fields of research and education. Her performance art and exhibition practice have taken her to prominent art venues such as the Venice Biennale (2001 and 2011), the Brooklyn Museum in New York (2007), the Busan Biennale in South Korea (2016), among others. She showed her work in numerous solo and group exhibitions and at performance, theatre, video, film and digital media festivals worldwide, including: ART ACTION 16, Gothenburg (2021), Voids 2021, Split, Croatia, Pratt Manhattan Gallery New York (2016), Deutsche Historisches Museum Berlin (2015), Manifesta 2, Musée d`Histoire de la Ville de Luxembourg (1998). Ostojić’s, most important solo exhibitions include: Skuc Gallery Ljubljana (2012), Kunstpavillon Innsbruck (2008), Salon of the Museum of Contemporary Art Belgrade (2017 and 2004), Halle für Kunst Lüneburg (2003), La Box Bourges (2003), Museum of Contemporary Art Zagreb (2002). Her works are part of important collections: Museum of Applied Arts Vienna, Kontakt Collection Vienna, Museum of Contemporary Art Ljubljana, Museum of Contemporary Art Belgrade, Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, Berlin, among others.

Photos: 

Misplaced Women?, performance by Tanja Ostojić, 2013, le Grand Escalier de la Gare du Saint Charles, Train station, Marseille. Performed by: Jane Kay Park, Emma-Edvige Ungaro, Alix Denambride, Kim Mc Cafferty, Robyn Hambrook, Helen Averley, Patricia Verity and Tanja Ostojić, Préavis de Désordre Urbain, Marseille. Photo: Anne Carles. Copyright: Tanja Ostojić

Links:

Mis(s)placed Women?  Blog: https://misplacedwomen.wordpress.com/

Mis(s)placed Women?  Video Channel:  https://vimeo.com/channels/1482708

KCB, Cultural Centre of Belgrade: www.kcb.org.rs

NGVU, New Gallery of Visual Arts Belgrade: www.ngvu.me

CZKD Center: www.czkd.org

The exhibition is supported by: Ministry of Culture and Information of the Republic of Serbia, Secretary of the Culture City of Belgrade, Goethe-Institut Belgrad, ifa: Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen, Germany, and MSUV, Museum of Contemporary Art Vojvodina, Novi Sad.