Correction/Portrait|
photo collage
220 cm x 90 cm
2004
Correction/Portrait is the photo documentation before, during and after an aesthetic correction on the face of the artist and the then director of the Museum of Contemporary Art of Vojvodina Živko Grozdanić. The surgically performed correction of the portrait was made according to sketches and the idea of Zoran Todorović.
At the 50th October Salon, Circumstance, he exhibited the work Gypsies and Dogs, a two-channel video installation.
One of the most common procedures in cosmetic surgery is the correction of the auricle – lop earedness, and the aim of this “action” was to bring Grozdanić’s face closer to a model considered desirable and classically beautiful. An important characteristic of this work, present throughout Todorović’s practice, is the potential of a staged and performed situation/action/event which becomes a work of art. Todorović deliberately uses certain forms of production aimed at transforming human material/body (fat, tissue, hair, skin) into an artefact or item of commodity (soap, blanket, clothing).
If the body is a field of diverse cultural content, as well as a cultural construction dependent on the model of sexuality, racial and class recognition, a diet, physical activity and way of dressing, in this case, it is a process of deletion of the already existing entries. What happens to Grozdanić is what happens regularly to those involved in the mechanisms of cultural industry, from folk/pop musicians to actors and athletes, as well as to social and political figures, who engage the affective attention of the masses and who therefore serve as identification models: he is being “redesigned” according to the taste of the masses and the desired result of that imagined identification process. Todorović, on the other hand, with this act leaves the sphere of sole personal responsibility, determined by actions over his own body, in which his work was imprisoned before, and enters the field of manipulation with another person’s body.
© Cultural Centre of Belgrade, the October Salon Collection and the artist
Purchase Contract: III-5-482/1/15.12.2014.
Inventory No. 1395
Photo: Courtesy of the artist
The Bride #3
photo collage
280 cm x 100 cm
1998
The work Bride #3 is a performance in which the artist uses a naked female body, coated with sugar solution, covered with kilos of flies grown for the occasion and a “veil” of semi-translucent fabric, as an object (object of observation) which is at the same time the subject (participant/performer) in the performance. Todorović stages The Bride as a live performance, although the performing/performance is presented through the documentation of the event. In that sense, the performance event takes place in “privacy” and, through photo collages, appears in “public”, involving the interaction with the viewers, who often have an aversion to exposed intimacy.
It was performed by Tanja Ostojić, an artist who began her art practice in Yugoslavia in 1996 as a performer in the adverse circumstances of an isolated art scene. The documentation on the events/works by Zoran Todorović is just an art form, and the initiated events are those moments in which art, regardless of the given parameters, opens the possibility of performing a form of life. Todorović also stages The Bride as a “live performance” that introduces new media or social technologies to a specific performance situation – the relationship between private and public – intimate and shared.
© Cultural Centre of Belgrade, the October Salon Collection and the artist
Gift Contract: III-5-329/24.08.2018.
Inventory No. 113
Photo: Courtesy of the artist
Selected Bibliography:
INTENZITET AFEKTA: Performansi, akcije, instalacije: retrospektiva Zorana Todorovića, Mar. 18 – Apr. 6, 2009, Museum of Contemporary Art of Vojvodina, Novi Sad, 2009
Jasmina Čubrilo, About Restoring and Nourishing/Eating Beauty, Reč 49, Belgrade, 1998
Stevan Vuković, “Korekcija/Portret”, Exhibition Catalogue Konkordija Gallery: Exhibition Practice as a Cultural-Political Strategy, May-August 2004, Museum of Contemporary Art, Belgrade, 2004
Zoran Todorović: Warmth, 6.06 – 22.11.2009, Pavilion of Serbia at the 53rd Venice Biennale, Museum of Contemporary Art, Belgrade, 2009
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Zoran Todorović (1965, Belgrade, Serbia) is a professor at the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Arts in Belgrade; one of the initiator of the Transmedia Research Course. In his work, he thematizes the issues of surveillance, bio-political management and control – revealing unpleasant truths and hidden motivations. Since 1992 he has presented his works at leading local and international institutions and festivals of new media in Europe and the world. He represented Serbia at the 53rd Venice Biennale. His works are part of private and public collections in the world and in Serbia. The winner of the October Salon Award in 2000.