I Gave You Everything
installation, carpet – polypropylene, wool
120 cm x 170 cm
2017
The work is part of the series of installations with tapestries realized within her solo exhibition Babylon the Great, at the Eugster Gallery || Belgrade, 2017. The male body is the central motif and performative instrument that prevails in various ways in the scenes and relationships in this series of works.
The chosen motifs follow up on the Lines, Rows, Columns (Dormitory) Art Project, performed at the 56th October Salon.
The artist takes over some segments of this ambient installation through the photographic documentation that served as a starting point and visual template for creating larger tapestries. The installation I Gave You Everything and the choice of material and form, but also the function of the carpet itself, as an object that refers to the intimate environment of our lives, strongly proposes the appropriation of intimacy as such. The male body is used here both as a subject and object. As the artist points out, men, equally adored and demonized in the Serbian culture of the 1990s, and especially their physical presence and appearance, became an obsession in pop-folk songs, music videos, films, but also in real life. This phenomenon emerged as a consequence of social change, war, anxiety and fear. Perceiving the man as a soldier (early 1990s), a potentially dangerous criminal or a damaged boy from the street, paradoxically, puts the male body in the position of objectification, observation and, therefore, vulnerability. These are constructs of personal relations towards issues of gender identity and integrity, by which the author tries to locate the limits of her own female perspective in perceiving and understanding the otherness, i.e., men.
© Cultural Centre of Belgrade, October Salon Collection and the artist
Purchase Contract: III-5-370/24.10.2019.
Inventory No. 1658
Photo: Courtesy of the artist
Selected Bibliography:
56th October Salon, The Pleasure of Love. Cultural Centre of Belgrade, 2016
Ivana Ivković: Babylon the Great, Oct. 27 – Nov. 18, 2017, solo exhibition, text by Ana Bogdanović, Eugster, Belgrade, Belgrade, 2017
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Ivana Ivković (1979, Belgrade, Serbia) graduated in painting and obtained a master’s degree in drawing from the Faculty of Fine Arts in Belgrade. Since 2002, she has had a number of solo exhibitions in Serbia, Austria, Germany, Lebanon, Italy, Spain, USA, Turkey, Denmark, Canada, India and participated in several important group exhibitions in the country and abroad. She was a finalist for the Politika Award for the most successful exhibition three times, in 2007, 2010 and 2019. Her works are part of the Telenor Collection of Contemporary Serbian Art, permanent collection of the Belgrade City Museum and some significant private collections in New York, Basel, Lisbon and Turkey. More information at https://www.eugster-belgrade.com/artists/ivana-ivkovic/