Sanja Iveković

Sanja Iveković (born 1949 in Zagreb) is a Croatian photographer, sculptor and installation artist. Her work is known to tackle such issues as female identity, media, consumerism, and political strife. Considered to be one of the leading artists from the former Yugoslavia, she continues to inspire many young artists.

Iveković was born in Zagreb in 1949, when it was still part of Yugoslavia under the dictatorship of Marshal Josip Broz Tito.

Iveković studied graphics at the Zagreb Academy of Fine Arts from 1968 to 1971. Her artistic career began during the Croatian Spring in the early 1970s when, together with other artists, she broke away from mainstream settings, pioneering video, conceptual photomontages and performance. Much of her work is centred on her own life and the place of women in today's society. She was the first artist in Croatia to label herself a feminist artist. She has been a key player at the Centre for Women's Studies in Zagreb since it opened in 1994.

Iveković's activism extends beyond her art. She has founded or been engaged with Croatian women's organizations such as ELEKTRA-Women's Art Center, B.a.B.e., Autonomous Cultural Center—ATTACK!, Center for Women War Victims, and the Association of Feminists.

Since the beginning of her artistic career, Iveković has always been interested in the representation of women in society. Among her early works are "Double Life" (1975) where she pairs 66 photographs of her private life with similar shots of models in magazine advertisements, "Make Up-Make Down" (1978) with filmed or photographed self-portraits, and "General Alert: Soap Opera" (1995) produced for television. "Figure & Ground" (2006) depicts collages of female models looking like armed terrorists covered in blood and wearing military-inspired clothing from top designers.

"Women's House", an ongoing project since 1998, displays plaster casts of the faces of abused women arranged in a semicircle. "Women's House (Sunglasses)" is a series of posters, billboards, and magazine inserts, focusing on gender violence in postcommunist Croatia.

At the 2010 Gwangju Biennale, Iveković's "On the Barricades" was a living memorial commemorating the Gwangju people's uprising of 18 May 1980. Based on her "Rohrbach Living Memorial" (2005) depicting the fate of the Roma victims of the holocaust, the new presentation was enacted by volunteers representing statues of the victims. They were surrounded by 10 monitors presenting slideshows of photos of the 545 victims, whose eyes were intentionally closed by the artist.

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