Sanja Iveković was born in Zagreb in 1949. After graduating from the Zagreb Academy of Fine Arts in 1971, she became one of the leading members of the New Art Practice as the first artist to explicitly address the feminist cause and related theories in first the Yugoslav and then Croatian art scenes. Her first solo exhibition, which was held in 1970 while Iveković was still a student, used reactive coloured tubes to show glimpses of the interactional scenography processes that would become a staple of her practice. Regardless of the medium – photography, video art, collages, image manipulations or direct public interventions and performances – challenging unjust social status quos is at the core of her world-acclaimed artistic practice. She taught philosophy at the University of Zagreb between 1975 and 1991 and then at Paris 8 University Vincennes-Saint-Denis from 1992 to 2003, before serving as the programme director of the International College of Philosophy in Paris from 2004 to 2010.
Conscious of the intellectual momentum behind her and her generation, in 1978, Iveković co-founded the Podroom Gallery with fellow artist Dalibor Martinis (another feminist plastician) to provide a hub for their creative peers.
Feminism holds a central place in Iveković’s corpus. Her work exposes, questions and contextualises the representation of women, their place in (communist or capitalist) society, their status as icons in media, their related objectification and the violence to which they are subject. Since 1989, she has carefully and critically documented how these subjects have evolved from the fall of the communist regime to the emergence of the capitalist order.
Sweet Violence (1974) uses footage of the economic propaganda program to break down the paradox of the Yugoslav state, which positioned itself against fascist totalitarianism, while adopting authoritarian structures that evolved into what is often described as ‘utopian consumerism’.
Double Life (1975) and Bitter Life (1975–1976) juxtapose media imagery with personal photographs in a bid to compare and contrast the public and private spheres. In the performance piece Triangle (1979), Iveković simulated masturbation on a balcony during Tito’s official visit to Zagreb, until police rang at her door. The performance was then turned into an installation consisting of four photographs and an explanatory note. Gender stereotypes, whether on television or in printed media, are dissected in General Alert: Soap Opera (1995), Paper Women (1976–1977) and Make Up-Make Down (1978). She explores how policies influence collective memory in Personal Cuts (1982), a series that highlights the stakes of democracy.
Since the 2000s, Iveković has continued to work on this collective memory in Gen XX (1997–2001) and The Nada Dimić File (2000–2002), two series dedicated to the women who took part in Croatia’s resistance effort against the Nazis, but whose names have been forgotten by history.
The recognition of her artistic contributions culminated in 2012 when she enjoyed two back-to-back retrospectives, first at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York and then at the Grand Duke Jean Museum of Modern Art (Mudam) in Luxembourg.
