Ivana Ivković, LIKE THERE IS NO TOMORROW, installation/textile object, 2016

The message LIKE THERE IS NO TOMORROW (in the form of a billboard) I used for the first time in the site specific installation with the same name, placed on the roof of a petrol station in the suburb of Gemmayze in Beirut. The work was supposed to be my commentary on the city and on my fascination with its multi-layered quality. The image was accompanied with text and its appearance was evocative of the aesthetics of the credits of old Hollywood movies, suggesting distance in the observation. Sensing the trap of the sensitive historical, political and social tensions I had found myself in, this distance, as though I was watching a film, turned out to be the only sincere way of accepting and experiencing the city. After this Beirut experience, I continued utilizing the message LIKE THERE IS NO TOMORROW as part or a title of various works that treated the topic of the intimate experience of the world. The installation consists of the same image and text, this time in the form of a screen-curtain, accompanied by drawings placed behind it (realized in the period between 2008 and the present day). The work testifies about a personal lifestyle and about the continuity of certain topics and quandaries in it. The atmosphere of the image that reminds us of film credits is thus preserved like an ironic shift in the observation of one’s own life. The last few years of my life I have spent in a ‘nomadic’ style, travelling regularly to take up my artistic residences, to exhibit and participate in various projects. For me the fact that my artistic practice was inseparable from my travels and frequent changes of residence was very important to me. My work is eclectic, which explains the frequent contrasts and contexts that bring together something so disparate such as historically and geographically distant cultures and confronting emotions and feelings.

Ivana Ivković (1979, Belgrade) graduated in painting and specialized in drawing from the Faculty of Visual Arts in Belgrade. She has been exhibiting since 2002, both solo and in group exhibitions in Serbia, Austria, Germany, Italy, Spain, USA, Turkey, Denmark, Canada, Switzerland and India. She was the two times finalist for the prestigious Politika prize for the most successful exhibition in 2007 and 2010. She was awarded the grant of KulturKontakt in Vienna (Austria) in 2008 and of the organisation Residency Unlimited from New York (USA) in 2012, as well as the grant of Casa dell Arte from Bodrum (Turkey) in 2013 and of the city of Linz (Austria) in 2014. Her works are part of the Telenor collection of contemporary Serbian art, of the collection of the Museum of Belgrade and of several significant private collections in New York, Basel and Lisbon.