Entre nous reedited
two-channel video
3’57’’, 5’58’’, in loop
2007–2016
The installation, a video performance by Dragana Žarevac, consists of two recordings – one shows a woman, visibly exhausted, trying to establish communication and calling out for a man on the other side of the glass wall; in the other video, the man the woman is addressing, turned away, does not notice the messages being sent to him. Responding to the theme of the Ilemouvante Festival (Corsica, 2007), “the wall”, the artist directly and metaphorically points to walls and barriers that prevent communication between people, which are sometimes completely invisible, but thereby no less impermeable. With the work Entre nous, the artist primarily re-examines the relationship between the woman (herself – a professional artist) and the man in the community.
With the video performance Entre nous, and with her decades-long work in performance and video performance as a personal statement, Dragana Žarevac deals with the relationship among woman, art and society. She often uses, examines and communicates ideas that are almost always focused on the biological category of gender, the notion of time (past, memory and projection of the future), the space of society and the space of ideas. She builds a personal work, in the first person, in the sense that she relies on what is current in all its factors – aesthetic, historical, political, social – she liberates them and returns them to the game by working on their reshaping and redefining. Opposing the definitive versions, she engages in exploring the dynamics of the collective imagination, from symbolic labels to the historical past, with the aim to express her version of the world and by it, like many other contemporary artists, to redefine – if necessary – the artist in the position of a discoverer, guide, who themself is a medium (self media).
© Cultural Centre of Belgrade, October Salon Collection and the artist
Purchase Contract: III-5-373/16.11.2016.
Inventory No. 1447
Photo: still from the video work
Selected Bibliography:
Dragana Žarevac: Vera u progres, Oct. 23. – Nov.14, 2008, catalogue of the solo exhibition, texts by Dragana Žarevac and Etienne Sandrin, Nadežda Petrović Art Gallery, Čačak, 2008
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Dragana Žarevac (1959, Belgrade, Serbia) is a visual artist. Her exhibiting career began in 1979, with performances at the Student Cultural Centre in Belgrade and numerous gallery spaces in the former Yugoslavia and abroad. Her work is characterized by a personal attitude on issues of general social importance. The artist, in an original way, integrates the experiences of historical conceptual art and some of the most vital plastic and conceptual solutions created at the intersection of two media, performance and video art. She exhibits video works and installations, drawings and works in the medium of sound. She was awarded by the Centre for Art and Media Technology (ZKM) in Karlsruhe (1998), won the Zlatna sfinga [Golden Sphinx] Award for the video opus at the Videomedeja Festival in Novi Sad (1999) and the 23rd Nadežda Petrović Memorial Award (2005). She was a resident artist in the ZKM Centre, Karlsruhe; CICV Centre, Hérimoncourt; and in Sant Antonino, Corsica. She also works as a curator and selector of video programmes, international video festivals and exhibitions, and organizes video workshops. More information at https://zarevac.wixsite.com/zarevac