Window Cleaners Nina Ivanović
Window Cleaners Nina Ivanović
The primary importance of this project lies in the fact that it promotes October Salon, the most relevant exhibition of contemporary art in the country and in the region, an event of great importance for the City of Belgrade, which has been organized by the Cultural Centre of Belgrade for years. We are of the opinion that by the production and exhibition of Nina Ivanović’s work of art, Cultural Centre of Belgrade can contribute and enrich a visual image of our city.
While this project is dedicated to our regular audience, it is also meant to introduce October Salon to the less informed visitors and passers-by, and to attract potential new audience. The location of our building right at the beginning of Knez Mihailova Street, in the very centre of Belgrade, puts us in a favourable but also binding position to offer to Belgrade, to its guests, and to our dear fellow citizens a work of art that is temporarily exhibited outside of a typical interior gallery space. Thus, art becomes more visible and available to passers-by who do not always have to be ready to take some time to visit one of our galleries, or other galleries and museums in Belgrade.
We are aware of the importance of New Year holidays and the atmosphere they create, as well as the need for the City of Belgrade to present not only hospitality and amusement, but also culture as an integral part of its tourist offer. In that respect, the Cultural Centre of Belgrade feels responsible and called to continue creating and enriching cultural space of the city.
For all these reasons, we have decided to invite artist Nina Ivanović, the laureate of the 57th October Salon, to create a work in public space. Her work of art is a creation of a sculpture on the topic of light forms.
In her art practice, Nina Ivanović has already used photography and drawings (two-dimensional and spatial) to present everyday moments and cityscapes. What has defined the works she creates for a certain exhibition/occasion are not only topics but also architecture of the space where they are exhibited. In this concrete situation, she goes a step further, and creates by the use of light. Taking all the preconditions into account, including the cacophony of New Year’s light decorations, the artist has come to an idea that the Cultural Centre of Belgrade office windows should be given illuminated window cleaners. In her earlier works, she has already explored the topic of window cleaners, inspired by dance-circus movements of performers and generally by specific jobs that require different (extreme) ways of movement. The movements of window cleaners with the use of a rope in order to do their job, made her perceive them as acrobats, alpinists, and workers.
After the exhibition, this work of art by Nina Ivanović will be donated, as a present by the City of Belgrade, to a chosen healthcare, education, or children welfare institution.
This project can also be an initiative to create, over the future New Year and Christmas holidays in Belgrade, a unique open-space gallery, which would gather a number of artists. That would combine a holiday atmosphere and the promotion of visual art in public space.
Nina Ivanović was born in 1986 in Belgrade. She graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts in Belgrade, Painting Department, in 2010. Since 2006, she has been an active participant of the art scene through workshops, summer schools, group and solo exhibitions in country and abroad. Nina is the laureate of the Faculty of Fine Arts Award for drawing (academic year 2008/’09) and the First Prize from the “Vladimir Veličković” Fund (2014). In 2018, she won the 57th October Salon Award. For three months during 2013-2014, she was an artist in residence at Glo’Art Centre in Belgium and for a month in 2017 at Kuckucks Nest in Basel, Switzerland. In her work, she addresses everyday situations through various media, such as drawing, photography and wire installation.
In 2012, together with six other artists, she founded the U10 Art Space, and has run it since.
